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Loading ...Digest: Why the Health Care Reform Bill Should Be Scrapped
Thus I inaugurate what may become a staple of the blog—the Digest. The basic theory is that a real post should be well-reasoned and explanatory, probably with a lot of links. I have ideas for these kinds of posts. Generally, they grow more and more consuming and the related Google Reader tag gets longer and longer until the post would require countless hours of writing, several editors and a publishing agreement. The Digest is where I rattle off some of those ideas with minimal explanation, perhaps returning later to further explain a point. In other words, I just dump my thoughts out and let you run with them. Go ahead. Run.
- It’s not health care reform. It’s health insurance reform. While this may seem a minor complaint, it’s actually the key source of the problem. And it’s being ignored.
- No one has ever died for lack of health insurance. Despite all the claims of death-by-lack-of-insurance, it’s a bogus notion. Ask yourself when was the last time you saw an EMT carrying a briefcase full of insurance contracts or an obituary lamenting the lack of a signature on the appropriate form. People die from lack of health care. (cf #1)
- Forcing participation in a broken system doesn’t fix it. The current health care system doesn’t work. Insurance companies, rather than spreading costs and leveraging their size to lower prices, have become middlemen that complicate processes and raise costs. Throwing money at those companies (or forcing the citizenry to do so) doesn’t solve the problem. It’s simple, really: expensive faulty system + tons of money = really expensive faulty system.
- Socialized health care has the potential to work. Ask Europe.
- Socialized health care has the potential to fail. Resurrect and ask the USSR or just ask a real, live Cuban. Or rate the quality of care in China.
- But this isn’t socialized health care. It’s socialized health insurance. (cf #1)
- Insurance |inˈ sh oŏrəns| noun; a thing providing protection against a possible eventuality. (The New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition)
- It’s impossible to force a company to provide insurance for pre-existing conditions. That’s not providing insurance; it’s paying for health care. (cf #1 and #7, noting especially the term possible)
- If you think health care costs are too high and insurance companies are crooked now, imagine the state of affairs when everyone has coverage. Insurance involves risk. Insured people are gambling they will require expensive medical care; insurers are gambling they won’t. When it’s mandatory, it’s not gambling.
- Insurance is inherently wasteful. Think about this: insurance companies make money. They’re like casinos. Sure, some people win and the company pays out, but they’re still in business. That means lots and lots of people are losing. So let’s make the party bigger. And require yearly trips to Vegas while we’re at it.
- Taxing of cadillac health care plans is backwards. We have special taxes on cigarettes and alcohol not because they are privileges, but because they are dangerous. This is the opposite. People who pay out the nose to have every possible medical need and wish attended by young, handsome/beautiful doctors and pseudo-medical personnel are actually taking care of themselves. Now they need punished?
- I oppose robbing the rich to pay the poor. While I’m all in favor of those with means helping those in need, it should be a choice.
- Remember the American dream? People use to think America was the land of opportunity. Now they think it’s the land of ease and plenty. Everyone’s a socialist until they pull in an above-average income.
- It’s worth losing a year of legislative work to protect centuries of history and whatever future we have.
- (Oh, and I believe deficits actually matter.)
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Loading ...L1ttle Sh0ut 0ut
One of the questions I’m asked most often by students and other interested parties (often at interesting parties, such as last night’s) is ‘Do you cook for yourself?’ While I’m not sure what answer would most satisfy the questioners, I usually claim to prepare some of my own food while admitting my kitchen inefficacy.
That was before I added a powerful new weapon in the war against domestic ineptitude.
Cookingbynumbers.com gives you simple recipes from simple food. Bachelors, inexperienced kitcheneers who just entered cooking contests, and people too lazy to get out and get food, cooked or cookable—this is for you. Just select the foods you have, and it gives you recipes. Simple recipes with cool names. You’ll feel like a French chef just by swiping some egg on bread and putting it in the oven. And don’t worry, it gives you all the instructions you could need, too—from chopping an onion on up.
It’s obviously not for the master-chefs out there. Or the aesthetes. It doesn’t give you all the details or gourmet results. It does give you edible food, simple instructions and a sense of accomplishment. That’s good enough for me.
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Loading ...It used to feel like -30°.
I used to pay attention to wind chill—not because I actually cared, but because it gave me a much lower temperature to brag about having braved. It was hard to remember the right numbers, though, so I gave up after a while. Besides, I found it was easier to tack on ‘…and that’s without the windchill!’ And as it turns out, wind chill calculations are basically pointless, anyway.
Having lived in ever-colder climates (NE Ohio, Wisconsin, Changchun, Haerbin), though, I’ve always realized the utility of effectively communicating frigidity.
I mean, temperature is standard, but anyone who has lived in a cold place can tell you it has some shortcomings when trying to make others respect your hardiness. How do you make someone feel the difference between 15° and -15°?Obviously, the numbers are different, but they belie the vast experiential shift accompanying that minus sign. Plus, to blend into my non-US environment, I’ve adapted to the noting temperatures in Centigrade, which few Americans bother trying to understand. So we need new scales.
Some people try to explain their cold in experiential terms. I felt ‘like my feet were about to fall off’ or ‘chilled to the bone’ tell us you suffered, but we can’t know how much. For starters, these are only figures of speech. Your feet are still securely attached at the ankle, I’ll presume, and I rather doubt your muscles and subcutaneous fatty layers had failed to properly insulate your skeletal system, substantial though they may be (one or the other, that is). But more to the point—you’re probably just whiny anyway.
Thus I officially call for a sensory chill index (SCI).
Remember that scene in Farmer Boy when they tossed a bucket of water into the air and it would freeze before it hit the ground? That, my friends, is an SCI—something that instantly tells people exactly how the cold is affecting you in a way we can all appreciate.
As you live in colder climes, you develop an innate ability to note cold. It’s not exactly magic, but it almost seems like it. It’s actually just observing various phenomena. The goal of an SCI would be to quantify some of those phenomena.
Here is some groundwork:
- Frozen noses. We’re not talking about your nose’s feeling cold here. No, I’m literally referring to the actual freezing of the fluid in your nose. A relatively recent post on some (southern-bred) friends’ blog noted their surprise when they found their noses freezing this winter. It brought back college days. Cold days were when your nose froze at first breath; when the freeze set in at Carey Dorm, you were experiencing just another winter day and making it to the all the way to the library with mobile nose hairs meant conditions were practically balmy.
- Snow crunch to squeak ratio. Obviously, warm snow is melty and slushy. I’ve not seen that kind of snow before late April in many a year. I take it for granted that tromping through new-fallen snow sounds something like squishing a bag of corn starch. But when it gets cold, the crunch that renders autumn leaves sensually vapid gives way to a sharp squeak. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t ever try to tell me you have felt cold.
- Longevity of visible breath. We all know what it’s like to see your breath. But, as it gets colder, that breath turns into a sort of ethereal scarf. Or it leaves a long trail, as if people were tiny jet engines on a clear summer day. The longer the trail, the colder it is.
- Watery eye meltdown. I don’t think we can count eyes’ watering as a reliable indicator, since that varies dramatically from person to person. Shed tears are generally going to respond to conditions pretty reliably though, I’ll warrant. So did your tears drip from your nose, form a mini-icicle there, add icy war paint to your cheeks or threaten to seal your eyelids shut?
I’m no scientist, but I think this could be a start. Care to contribute?
*Sorry for a long post with no picture, but at the speed my internet is working now, a single picture would add a good hour to the already too-long posting process. Besides, it gives you a chance to exercise your imagination.
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Loading ...I’m not (quite) on Facebook.
If you are reading this on my website or via RSS, you can leave now. Thanks for coming. Have a good week.
OK, it’s just us, Facebook Friends. I’ve been hoping for a while to talk to you about something.
I talked with my mom a while ago, and she was under the impression I have been active on Facebook. This conviction confused me for a while. Then I remembered that my blog posts are still imported into FB, so you have been seeing me write new notes from time to time, but I’ve been ignoring messages, wall posts, friend requests and stupid application suggestions.
Here’s the deal: I’m not on Facebook, but I’m finding new FB-interactive tools from time to time. For example, I now can see just how many messages I can’t answer on Facebook. I think I’ll be able to reply to new wall comments soon, too. The systems are quite flimsy and admittedly imperfect, but they’re a start.
One tool I’ve found: When you leave a comment on one of these notes in Facebook, I can now get it back into my blog. And I can answer it there. So, let’s try it. You leave a comment, give me some time to import them and respond, then check my answer on my blog.
See how that works?
OK, thanks for hearing me out. I hope this clears the air between us.
Know that I love you.
(1 votes)
Loading ...Mad Men or Why Americans Hate Themselves
You know those moments when you’re too tired to be productive, but too awake to sleep? I’ve developed a few systems to utilize those eras (also known as afternoons). One of my favorites is to put some Chinese websites’ lack of concern for copyright law to good use by catching up on TV shows that seem noteworthy. That was how I got addicted to Lost and figured out enough Prison Break to appease my students. So, when I was sick a few weeks ago, it started a concentration binge that let me blow through almost three seasons of TV in as many weeks. This time, I took recommendations from blogger friends—primarily Heather—to focus on Mad Men.
If I weren’t already sick, I think Mad Men would have done it.
You weren’t expecting that, I’d assume. Let’s talk about what most people say:
- The acting is great. Check.
- The photography is stunning. Agreed.
- The writing is extraordinary. I happily concur. The dialogue (with a few notable exceptions) is a living, breathing example of why I wish I had a team of screenwriters with a great sense of both the next scene and the historical impact of the moment cueing my every utterance.
- The story is fabulous. This is where I get off. Since when do flat characters proving just how well you know them equal plot arcs? I do give props for avoiding the ‘everything you thought you knew was a lie’ cop-out certain seasons of Lost and every five minutes of Smallville fall back on. And they don’t undercut characters’ fundamental personas to give them dynamism (The Office). So, I’ll give it a ‘solid’, but refrain from handing out awards (Yes, I see the irony, but if President Obama’s Nobel taught us anything, it’s that even the big awards tell us far more about the givers’ biases than the receivers’ merits).
- It’s historically enlightening. Oh please.
We could discuss finer points of the show for a good long while, but others have been quite effective in this approach. So allow me to revert to my tried and true method of discussion: broad generalizations.
Mad Men is about one thing: escapism.
We’re working on two levels here. First, escapism is the driving force behind every character and most plot advances. Don is scary good at it; Pete is painfully ineffective. Peggy runs from obvious goblins; Betty’s have yet to be unmasked (and dumping the psychiatrist was terribly unfair). Whether living behind a mask (everyone except Roger) or flaunting your disregard for propriety (um, Roger), everyone scurries about trying to hide their tragic flaw only to collapse comfortably back into its clutches at the first sign of trouble.
Of course, the primary escape is sex. Who in the show doesn’t have some sort of sexual struggle? I mean, even Glenn has some weird surrogate Oedipus complex. I’m tempted to say this is just to keep people watching, but not having lived through the ‘50s or ‘60’s, I can’t really speak with authority. Still, it’s like watching a kung-fu movie: there is nothing even remotely realistic in the frequency and extremity of the action, but it just keeps scaling up.
So, why the fascination with the show? Because we’re all there.
Personally, I’m Don. Yes, I’m sure everyone says that. Hear me out. I’ve never assumed a false identity, cheated on my wife or ignored my brother into suicide, but I’m always controlling others’ perceptions. I can’t stop. Ever. I’m totally able to be separate people—and switch between them convincingly and almost instantly. Of course, some distance and locked doors help. And then the occasional three-week binge that terrifies everyone too much to ask what it was. I understand people—I have to. My mistakes are almost never open, and those who know about them usually respect the façade enough to keep from blurting it out. People brought face to face with my ugliness tend to downplay it out of respect, genuine love or fear of the mystery.
Maybe you’re more the ‘quiet desperation’ Betty. Possibly, with the Henry Francis release valve or, more realistically, without it (or the tastelessly gratuitous bar fling). Correctly or not, you think the world hates you, so you hate it back. And watch it pass you by. Smile when you have to.
Need recognition, anyone? Pete’s there with you. Try to fit the socially-prescribed mold? You and Joan connect. Desperate to be progressive and in-touch? Better start growing a beard (probably a soul patch), because you’re Paul. Wanting to break out but disappointed whenever you do? I think Peggy has your line.
Give me one truly satisfied (semi-meaningful) character in the show. Even Sally only gets enough attention to allow her vices to manifest themselves. Have you seen the opening? A dude falling helplessly, but finally presented as sprawling confidently in his chair. Nihilism, cynicism and pragmatism stew under surfaces thin enough to allow everyone to recognize a problem but present enough to keep them from discussing it.
Which brings us to the second way the show is about escape. We watch it to escape. No one (in the show or in reality) is really happy to be hiding. While confession is rare, admission upon confrontation is somehow freeing. So we admit our faults by identifying them as we watch. This is true personally and corporately. The corporate evils (sexism, racism) and the personal ones (greed, lust) the show highlights are ours. Viewing such evil allows us to identify and vilify it. Yet that third-party identification doesn’t actually condemn us directly. We admit it, but escape any consequences. In fact, we cheer for Don when he pulls off his trysts and secretly love the hedonistic office parties while shaking our heads in disgust. And if you think your disgust is genuine, explain why you’re still watching. 1
So allow me to add my voice once again to a growing chorus calling for true confession and transparency. I’ve advocated this to friends for some time. Admitting wrong and accepting the consequences or forgiveness that follows is absolutely necessary.
And hard.
At least, that’s what I’m saying now.
- My explanation is admittedly brief. That’s because the alternative is extremely involved. The above-referenced article takes on some of the ramifications in a national, corporate sense. ↩
