Umbral Echoes Blog

As reported by Forbes, there is a provision of the healthcare reform law called the medical loss ratio, that requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of the consumers’ premium dollars they collect — 85% for large group insurers — on actual medical care rather than overhead, marketing expenses and profit. Failure on the part of insurers to meet this requirement will result in the insurers having to send their customers a rebate check representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care.

I had thought that this was just a general rule of “we cap your profits at 15-20% overall.”  However, if I am understanding some paperwork my company recently got from BCBS, it seems that this is on a per customer basis.

Let that settle in for a bit, because it’s huge.

So let’s say that I’m on my company plan, and I don’t use my insurance for much of anything. Regardless of what the other people in my company on that plan do, I personally get a rebate check back. The insurance company sends it to my employer, who is then legally required to send it on to me. On first look it’s pretty awesome, but I think there are some side effects to this.

Possible Positive Side Effect

It encourages people to be healthy.  If you’re healthy and don’t need anything other than routine check-ups, you could get a sizable rebate back.

Possible Negative Side Effect

This actually discourages people from getting regular check-ups, and even discourages them from being treated when they are sick — especially people in lower income brackets who stand to gain more proportionally from these rebates.

Debatable Side Effect

A bigger side effect, however, is that I’m pretty sure this will eventually mean the end of private insurance companies, or at the very least it will mean some serious changes to them. Whether this is a good or bad thing is debatable, but let me explain why it is likely.

Insurance companies are only allowed to make 20% profit max off of any one individual, yet the losses they can suffer from someone who costs them money are not currently capped. So one person who needs regular arthritis medication, or a heart surgery, or cancer treatment, will be worth many healthy people. And with the health situation of this country only getting worse, I can’t imagine that insurance companies will be able to stay afloat if this medical loss ratio is on a per-person basis.

Insurance companies can only work around this in two ways, that I see. First, they could severely lower lifetime max benefits — so maybe most plans would only pay out a maximum of $100,000 over your entire life. Second, and more likely, they could jack rates up so high that the 15-20% that they’re getting from healthy people still pays for the less-healthy people.

Example: Let’s say that there are 4 “healthy” (never need anything but routine check-ups) people for every 1 unhealthy person, and that on average the unhealthy person costs the insurance company an average of $600 per month — that’s off the top of my head, but I think that including surgeries, medications, specialist visits, etc. that number isn’t too far off.  To just break even they would have to charge $600/mo for each person on the plan.  And even that would actually cause the insurance company to go under because they couldn’t pay for workers or buildings. So let’s also assume that the insurance company has about a 15% overhead (which I believe is insanely low as far as insurance companies go).  That means $690/mo per person on the plan, and that’s assuming it’s not a large group plan.  If it is, that number jumps to $920/mo per person.

If insurance companies take that “jacking the prices up” route, and there is a government option for healthcare, I think that employers and individuals are all going to opt for the government option. Hence, the eventual end of private insurance.

If we were a healthier country, or had lower medical costs (a huge portion of medical costs go toward medical insurance because of our messed up legal system), those numbers would be much lower. For example, if we have one unhealthy person for every 9 healthy people, it cuts those premiums in half. But this speaks to a different point that I will likely make in another post.

These are some of my thoughts on the bigger announcements made at the Q&A session at The Grand Masquerade 2011.

Related posts:

• World of Darkness Q&A at The Grand Masquerade 2011.  These are the announcements I’m reacting to.
• My thoughts on permadeath in MMOs.
• Why your gripes with the World of Darkness MMO are stupid

Permadeath

First, the biggest announcement (in my opinion) was that Final Death (aka permadeath) can happen.  This was a point of strong contention last year — some people absolutely wanted it, some absolutely did not.  I had my own reaction.  CCP stated that the input from last year informed their design decision going forward.

I believe that this can be done in a way that satisfies both people who love and hate the idea of permanent death. They also talked a bit about Humanity’s role in this game, which I think ties in here. So here are some ways I think that permadeath should be able to happen:

• If two players duel and choose that the loser dies for good. Chris McDonough raised this as a “question” to the audience, and there was resounding applause.
• If a player physically attacks someone else in Elysium.
• If a player breaks the Masquerade enough, they are flagged such that someone else can kill them (and possibly even diablerize them if they have that mechanic in game) without being thus flagged themselves, or suffering any other negative consequences.
• I’d even take it one step further, and say that if you kill someone this sort of Blood Hunt has been declared on, you get some influence/prestige/whatever.

This could be one of the defining elements of this game (and perhaps even the defining element). MMOs these days are about grind, netspeak, and generally everything but roleplaying.  Even on RP servers in WoW, you see very little roleplay.  It’s an afterthought — why waste my time doing something that doesn’t ultimately benefit me (mechanically)?

But the World of Darkness is not about killing the biggest badass dragon. It’s about creating a story, connecting with other characters and having social interactions, unveiling mysteries, and fighting the Beast within. The stated themes are: Power, Danger, Mystery, and Romance. So even if “power” is taken in the traditional MMO sense (which I’m pretty sure it’s not), that’s only a quarter of the game.

So what if we have a method using in-game mechanics to discourage people from doing things which break the feeling of the setting? Then the game will be self-policing, and that is the philosopher’s stone of MMO game design.

And as a note, ideally I’d like to see a carrot as well as the stick (to use the old metaphor) — some mechanical benefit to roleplaying in a way appropriate to the setting.

Sex and Violence

They said this will be an adult game, with nudity, violence, etc. This is awesome.  It just wouldn’t be the World of Darkness without tits and gore and mind-breaking fucked-up shit happening. Of course, they will have to figure out what to do in countries where certain types of sex and violence in games can simply get your game yanked, but they said they have a legal team researching and working on that.

Someone brought up the point that if you allow players to walk around naked, that breaks the game feeling.  In other words, you make it a more adult game by not allowing players to strip naked at will.  Chris’s response to that implied to me that they are well aware of this, and that full nudity would be allowed in havens (and hopefully other appropriate areas), but not necessarily in public.

Hellooooo cybersex havens!

I say that tongue-in-cheek, but sexuality is a huge part of the Vampire mythos, and I actually do think it would be damn cool to being able to lure a mortal (PC) to your haven with p[would be pretty damn cool.

Player-Run Political Structures

The Prince, Primogen, etc. in the cities will be PCs.  This is pretty frackin’ cool. I would expect it, based on EVE’s player-based focus, but it’s still nice to hear it confirmed. This will also be another defining characteristic of this game, I believe. The mechanics behind how one attains and keeps “office,” what it allows you to do, and other such details are yet to be revealed. What are your thoughts — how would you do a vampire political system?

Everyone Starts as a Mortal

Also very cool, in my opinion.  It was not mentioned whether one must necessarily find a PC sire, or if there is an option to be sired by an NPC.  I can see pros and cons to both. It was also stated that you cannot be embraced against your will, which is a good thing.  They did not mention the possibility of playing as a ghoul — I think that would be pretty neat, but really I don’t want them taking their focus away from creating an awesome vampire experience to create a cool vampire-lite experience.

One Server to Rule Them All

Okay, “sever” is a broad term since a server is really made up of many computers these days. But, this will be a semi-sharded game — everyone is in one game universe, but there will be different cities.  However, one can travel between cities, in a manner analogous to character server transfers in other games.  What is not clear is how easy or difficult that will be (though I imagine fairly easy and hopefully free).  It is also not clear whether your character’s name must be globally unique or not.  (Personally, I’d like it so that character names don’t even have to be unique on a given server like with Champions Online, but I somehow doubt that wish will be granted.)

It was also stated that the cities will all be large, but will not be clones of one another.  I imagine that they will be clones content-wise — I mean, dear Cthulhu it would take shit-tons of resources to make different maps for the different cities.  However, it was explicitly stated that cities will be different due to player controlled/originated things.  Taken in the mindset that this is from the same company that created EVE Online, I take this as a pretty big hint as to what could be planned, and I salivate over the possibilities.

External Access Via Web

No details were given, but if CCP is taking a page from Blizzard’s book with their World of Warcraft Remote, that will be pretty awesome. Even better if they make it capable of more things, and make it an included part of the game (as opposed to an add-on service). People are constantly on the move, and since they said that this will be very much like a Vampire LARP, being able to get notifications of events — and react to them — when you’re on the train to work will be a pretty huge thing.

Those are really the high points from the Q&A session. Let’s see what other news comes out in the following days!

Yesterday, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, volunteering himself to be chairman of the board instead. I predicted that their stock would plummet, but my company’s president (also named Steve!) said he didn’t think the stock would drop much because Apple “graduated everyone into the idea that he’s out.” Turns out, Steve was right — guess there’s a reason he’s in the driver’s seat.

In any case, I think this could be great for Apple. Actually, when Jobs leaves completely, I think Apple could make some great strides forward. How, you ask?

Because they won’t have Jobs’s ego holding them back. As one big example, HTML 5 is not replacing Flash, sorry buddy. Flash does not drain batteries like the filthy whore that Jobs makes it out to be (as proven by Flash running fine on hacked iPhones).  If iOS devices were to support Flash, that would knock out the main advantage that Android devices have*.  And hey, maybe they’ll be more willing to admit to mistakes too.  Remember that whole iPhone 4 antenna issue and Steve Jobs’s response to it?  Yeah.

Edit: It has been pointed out that I only used the example of Flash, which does not a valid argument make.  So as another example, Apple has a somewhat-recent policy of disallowing apps from linking to their own websites where people can buy stuff.  This, I feel, comes from the Jobs-like mentality of, “We’re the best, if you want in on our platform you play by our rules and give us a cut of everything that happens on our device.”  However, this will ultimately weaken them as companies turn instead to web apps, as Amazon recently did with their Cloud Reader. This gets consumers more comfortable with using web apps, and companies soon realize, “Hey, you mean I only have to pay to develop this once, and it will work on any mobile device with a browser — including both Apple products and Android products?  Sweet!”  More companies do that, meaning iOS has fewer exclusive apps, and consumers have a more viable choice in alternatives.

In general, I feel that Jobs has an attitude of, “We are the market leaders, therefore the market goes where we say, not the other way around.  We tell people what they want; they do not tell us what they want.”  Which, to some extent, is true.  But that level of ego also blinds one to their own weaknesses, which is to Apple’s detriment.

* I’m sure Android devices have many other awesome advantages, but from an average non-tech-savvy average Joe perspective, Flash is really the one functional thing missing from iPhones and iPads that Android has.

Permadeath. Permanent death in an MMO. Why in the world would you want such a thing? Simple:  emotion. The more you're risking, the greater the emotion — the greater the fear when you're risking it, the greater the sorrow if you lose it, and the greater the joy if you succeed. The World of Darkness Online will naturally have a horror element, which means sometimes you should be afraid in the game.  Also, "danger" is one of the four descriptors of what the game is trying to evoke (power, danger, mystery, romance).

Permanent death is something that just isn't done in MMOs. But it is explicitly on the table for (most) tabletop games. Why are people comfortable with it in the latter, but not in the former? And would it be possible to have permadeath done in a good way in MMOs?

I think the answer to the first question is, "Control." In a tabletop setting, the game master has control over the game, and if you're sitting down spending several hours with your group, you presumably trust the game master not to just gak your character willy-nilly. In an MMO there is no such control. In PvP games there are definitely griefers. But, I think such control could be added to MMOs. Which brings us to the second question.

To answer the second question, I do believe it could be done well in an MMO. I think that permanent death should only be able to happen under certain circumstances. In a tabletop game, your character generally only dies under a few circumstances:

1. You have really bad luck. And even then a good game master will give you an out.
2. You do something really dumb. Again, a good game master will generally try and give you some hints that this might not be the best plan of action.
3. You want your character to die. It does happen.
4. Your game master is a dick.

I think that these could be translated to MMOs quite nicely. So for each of the points above, here's how I would address it in an MMO.

1. Mechanics can be put in place to eliminate "bad luck" as a cause for permanent character death.
2. This is the area that has the most potential. Maybe if you kill and loot other characters enough, it flags you for permanent death.
3. No brainer, but again there's potential here. In most MMOs you just delete your character if you want them gone. But what if there were some way to go out that had a cool story, or that set up the story for your next character coming in?
4. In this case it would be the game mechanics themselves being the dick. Make it so that certain circumstances, which are within the player's control, must occur before a character can die permanently. As one example, maybe if you go on this certain storyline/quest, you risk permanent death — with great reward comes great risk.

To put this in terms of the World of Darkness MMO, I think permadeath is assuredly feasible. I would do it thusly:

• Overall, anyone can permanently kill anyone else, at any time. This requires not just putting them into torpor, but making a choice to take it one step further.
• If you permanently kill someone else who isn't the subject of a blood hunt, you yourself become subject of a blood hunt. Congratulations, now everyone is gunning for you because they'll gain prestige by killing you, and they won't have any negative consequences for it.
• In certain areas, have NPCs come to the aid of any character being attacked by another. Maybe a cop comes to arrest the offender. Maybe some gang bangers decide they don't want other people bringing attention to their area.

As a possible alternative to permanent death (or better yet, something that could be added on), perhaps the "fog of ages" from Requiem can be tweaked. This is the effect that causes vampires to forget things (and lose blood potency) as they grow ancient. Well perhaps when one is killed really good, they don't actually die but it puts this process into fast-forward, and you lose some blood potency, which could also cause you to lose some abilities. The only thing I don't like about this route is that it smacks of the bronze age of MMO days wherein you lost XP if you get killed. However, I think Vampire has a great built-in mechanic for this and it makes sense to use it.

It seems to me that the vast majority of people have political beliefs that benefit their situation. That seems natural, but then again, isn't selfishness something that we as humans try to work past? Civilization exists for the greater good of everyone, after all.

But again, it seems that most people are unable to grasp this, or at best they justify selfishness with logic instead of looking at things logically from the get-go. The rich say, "Less taxes on the rich!" The poor and middle class say, "More taxes on the rich!" This is normal, and people who hold selfish political beliefs generally don't interest me. It's expected. Though sometimes their systems of self-justification are interesting, ranging from thought-provoking to absurd.

What really pique my interest are people whose political views don't benefit themselves, or people like themselves. The person who says, "You know, I'd be okay with paying more taxes." The rich woman who says, "I think welfare is a necessary part of our society." The all-American country boy who says, "Shit, let more Mexicans in — they're just takin' the jobs we don't wanna do anyway!" The unemployed man who says, "I think unemployment benefits are too high." The girl eligible for disability who says, "I don't need this." The retired person who says, "I don't think there should be social security."

I personally hold some political beliefs that definitely don't benefit me. I think that taxes need to be higher — though I also think that government spending needs to be more efficient. I'm fine with the near-fact that people in my generation will pay social security but not get anything back from it. Not all of my political beliefs are that way, of course, but a few are. And though I know a few people who are the same, it seems that by and large, such people are very much in the minority.

This would seem to me to lead toward a tyranny of the majority. If 75% of the (voting) people realize that they can take resources from everyone else, and they vote for candidates that enact laws which benefit them (at cost to others), then… well, I think you can see where this is headed.

This line of thought always leads me to this quote, which is often attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler though its origins are still unclear (some attribute it to Alexis de Tocqueville):

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.

Sounds a little scary, huh?

As time goes on, the debate over gay marriage makes less and less sense to me. Why is it even a question? There is no moral, legal, or even religious argument for why gay marriage should not be allowed within the law.

Here are some reasons why people argue against gay marriage, followed by why those reasons are not valid concerns.

• Gay marriage is against the Bible
  Well that’s fine. No one is trying to force your church to hold a marriage ceremony for two people that it doesn’t agree with. If your argument is that gay marriage should be illegal because the Christian church (mostly) disagrees with it, I point you toward one of the founding principles of our country: the separation of church and state.
• Gay marriage is wrong because it can’t produce offspring
  If a woman is incapable of bearing children, should she be disallowed from getting married? I doubt you’d agree to that. Oh, but the barren woman could adopt, you say? Well then why not a gay couple? The argument for/against gay people being allowed to adopt is, I feel, a separate issue. However, undoubtedly you’ll say…
• Gay people shouldn’t have kids because there is no father/mother figure
  Then if a child’s father dies, and the mother doesn’t immediately re-marry, you absolutely must be in favor of taking the child away from the mother into protective services. What, you’re not in favor of that? That’s not the same? Yes it is. In fact, it’s an even worse situation for the child, if anything — at least with a gay couple, it is not a single-parent situation.
• If we allow gay marriage, then what’s to stop us from allowing a man and his dog to get married?
  Really? Does anyone seriously think that this argument holds water? They must, because I’ve seen it in so many places. Marriage is a legal contract between two people of age. Two people. If you can’t enter into a contract with something (which you can’t, with an animal), then you can’t marry it. Why is that so hard to understand?

The exact same arguments being made against gay marriage today were made against interracial marriage many years ago — it’s against the Bible, it’s immoral, it’s not good for the kids, most people are against it. Decades from now when gay marriage is allowed (I firmly believe it’s inevitable that it will be), the people who are giving those arguments against gay marriage will be looked upon the same way that we now look upon the people who gave those arguments against interracial marriage.

Honestly, I think the term “marriage” should be removed altogether from the law, in favor of civil unions for everyone. If John and Jane want to get married, that’s fine — the law recognizes it as a civil union, the same as if John and Dick want to do the same thing. Again, let’s remember that one of the concepts that this nation was founded on is the separation of church and state. Christianity should be treated no differently, where the government is concerned, than any other religion.

Let it never be said that I’m not willing to try new things, and change my opinions.

Many moons ago, before I discovered this magical nugget called the iPhone, I thought that texting was pretty silly.  Why take 30 seconds writing something out when you could call someone and say it in a fraction of that time?  The phone companies charge extra money to add text messaging to your plan (though I’ll be damned if I know why, other than “because we can”), it’s cumbersome, and impersonal.

Well, recently I’ve discovered that text messaging does have a few good uses.

• At work — When at work, or other places you can’t have a voice conversation, text messaging lets you keep in touch with people.
• Noisy environments — When you’re at a concert, it’s sort of a pain to yell into the phone to tell your friend to shave and queue up the porn for some dirty fun later on.
• Low signal areas — I’ve been in several places where you can’t get enough reception to talk, but there’s still enough of that magical digital bandwidth to push a few characters through.
• When you don’t want to interrupt — Need to ask someone something, but it’s not really that high priority, and they might be in the middle of something more important?  A text works nicely.

I find that I articulate myself better in writing than in speaking anyway — or at least, I think I do.  And as much of an IM junkie as I’ve been over the years, it feels pretty natural to communicate in that way.

However, after exchanging 3 or 4 texts with the same person, I’ll generally just dial their ass.  At that point, you’re both just wasting time typing things out.  Texting is also impersonal, which in some cases is appropriate.  But I find that people over-use it as a means of communication.  Which I’m sure the phone companies are loving.  Damn you Apple!  Come out with your push IM service faster, so I can ditch this damn texting plan and just use AIM or Yahoo to text people.  Biggest annoyance with this phone is that when the screen goes off, you’re also signed off instant messengers and don’t get notified of new messages.

And now I’ll stop this before it becomes any more of a tech rant.

In celebration of The Age of the Geek, I give you I Will Derive.  Not nearly as awesome as Stuck in the Windshield With You, but it will probably invade your brain just as thoroughly.

I’m not sure if I really agree with the article as a whole.  Geek culture is definitely leading the Internet at large, with sensations such as lolcats, Chocolate Rain, Numa Numa, and all the others that were made fun of in that episode of South Park (starts at 11:45).  But that’s like saying that America rules at Basketball.  Of course we do — we created it, and we’re the people ones that put the most time into it on a large scale.  To say that, “[Geeks have] created a new definition of what it means to be cool, a definition that leaves out the talents of the jocks, the M.B.A.-types and the less educated,” though, I think is a bit much.  What’s happened is that geekdom has become a more recognized and accepted subculture — and a pretty large one, at that.

One excellent point the article made is that, “Nerds began making large amounts of money [in the 1980s] and acquired economic credibility, the seedbed of social prestige.”  Geek culture has worked its way into the mainstream, and continues to do so more and more.  I think one important thing that pushes this is gaming culture.  We of the NES generation are inherently enthralled with video games; we seem to have it in our blood.  An avid gamer is just as (or more) likely to be a former jock who is crazy about Madden or Grand Theft Auto, as they are to be the stereotypical geek.  Things like World of Warcraft are gaining much more widespread acceptance.  It does seem to me that in society at large, being a geek is no longer any more of a stigma than being a jock (though admittedly, I tend to hang out in crowds where “geek” is worn as a badge of pride, so my opinion is probably biased by that).

And I suppose that’s what it’s really about.  Society is learning that geeks are useful, and not the awkward, antisocial stereotype that they’re often played to be.  To quote Tyler Durden, “We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. We program the software that controls your money and guides your missiles. Do not… fuck with us.”  Okay, so I added a bit to that.

I have realized that for the past few years I’ve been developing a semi-conscious feeling that at some point within my lifetime, society as I know it will cease to be.  I think this is brought on by a few factors, and is probably more related to American society than human civilization at large.  Nothing lasts forever, after all, and all empires go through a cycle of power.  It feels to me like America hit its peak in the 80s and 90s, and is now on a downward trend.  So in the back of my head, I’m always thinking to myself, “How can I save up, and what skills should I be honing, for that inevitable day (or more likely, decade) when it all crumbles?”

I think people in general are paid too much money for what they do, and it also seems like the majority of jobs don’t really provide anything concrete to society.  The entertainment industry seems unbalanced in regards to other industries, for example — farmers feed us, construction workers house us, but the entertainment industry isn’t something that’s necessary for us to live, yet so many of our resources are tied up in it.  I just met someone the other night who works in marketing, and her salary is close to $200,000.  On the one hand, good for her!  On the other… I think there are too many jobs like this, and economically speaking, sooner or later something’s gotta give.  And it seems to be in the process of giving way.

Our monetary system is so complex that it is an industry unto itself.  One of the larger ones, in fact.  Doesn’t something seem logically wrong with that — like something akin to a circular argument?  And America is spending its dwindling riches feeding money into China to keep its lifestyle, which is essentially propelling the destruction of the environment.  Not to get all treehuggin’, but I’ve heard that China has now surpassed America in carbon emissions (or if not already, then they will very soon).  And with how their government is, I think that trend will only grow.

I looked out across the waters of Chicago, over to the mass of abandoned buildings in Gary, Indiana… and I wondered, “How long until most of America is like that?  How long until people have taken so much from the land that it can no longer support all of us?”  I imagine a world of people starving, crippled by the comforts of modern life and unable to survive without them.  And the crazy part is, a big part of me looks forward to it.  I think it’s best summed up by Chuck Palahniuk, so I will leave you with this quote:

“In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”

Went to a lecture last night by Jackson Katz, which was centered on male violence toward women.  It was interesting to see a man speaking on gender issues, and likewise he did come at it from a very different angle.  His premise is that things like this shouldn’t be called women’s issues, or even gender issues, but men’s issues.  He gave several reasons for this, like the fact that the vast majority of violence/abuse is perpetrated by men, and therefore it’s an issue with the male culture of violence.  What struck home for me was when he said when it’s labelled “women’s issues” or even “gender issues,” men tend to automatically ignore it and assume it doesn’t apply to them.  I realized that I’ve been guilty of that, myself.

What was also interesting is that Katz is a very “manly” man — college football player, solid-looking guy with a square jaw and stubble, the whole nine yards.  It was an odd contrast hearing a guy like that talk about these sorts of issues, and I think that probably helps the effectiveness of his programs.  Hearing this same message from an effeminate guy, for example, wouldn’t have nearly the same impact.

One really interesting thing that he demonstrated was the image of males in the media.  We often hear about how women are pressured to be this ideal Barbie-like form, but he showed some examples of the image of men changing, too.  Professional wrestlers, for example, used to be big guys overall, but also a little tubby.  These days, they’re steroid-infused freakshows.  And the best example was toys — he showed an example of a Luke Skywalker figure from the 70’s, versus one from the 90’s.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a great one from the 90’s, but I think you can tell the difference here, regardless.

70’s:

90’s.  Check out these pecs:

Katz works with the Marines, high school and college sports organizations, and other such groups to curb violence against women.  He said that one really important factor was to create a culture in those groups where it’s not okay to abuse/mistreat women.  I found this to already be true in a lot of groups that I’ve been in — both friend groups, and sporting groups.  There has always seemed to be a general attitude of, “If some guy hurts a girl, I’ll kick his fucking ass.”

In fact, I knew a guy in middle school named Andy, who was 2 years ahead of me.  For a while he was sort of a big brother/mentor to me, and he was involved in a group that essentially acted as vigilantes.  He told me a story once of how they took a crowbar to the knees of a guy who physically abused his girlfriend.  Of course, I could never know if any of it was actually true, or if he was just trying to win my awe (he was successful, if so), but in either case it shows the sort of counter-abuse culture that Katz was talking about.  Though granted, probably taken a few steps past what he intends.

There were a lot of other neat points in the lecture, but I won’t go into them all here.  Suffice to say, it made me think about some things differently than I had before.  He came at it from a viewpoint similar to that in Boondock Saints.  “I don’t hit or rape girls,” isn’t really saying much of anything.  If you see injustice happening, and do nothing about it, then you’re essentially condoning it.