Sonotmu

Couple things that stink about the health care bill

Ok, while I'm extremely grudgingly in favor of the current health care bill, there are a couple of provisions that make me have to hold my nose lest I blow chunks of anger. 

My favorite is the mandate that you have to buy (private) insurance.  Nice.  While there are subsidies available, if you make, say, $40,000 as an individual and don't currently have insurance, you're going to get whacked - the average yearly cost of a "low cost" plan at the "health exchange" that's part of the bill is $5300.  Kiss 1/8th of your income goodbye as mandated by congress.  You can skip out on it, but then you pay a 2.5% penalty on your income and, presumably, don't end up with insurance.  Nice choice.

The other provision that stinks is that after 2014, 9% of increases to Medicaid will have to paid for by the states.  Nice that the (already broke) states get a say in this.  There's a whiff of unfunded mandate about this.

There are some good provisions in the bill (particularly the portions that regulate the insurance industry and protect health-care consumers), but compared to the bill I wish we had...well, you deal with what you can get, I supposed.

Oh, and President Obama - all those months of courting Republicans to support a "bipartisan" bill...how did that work out for you?  I was saying from the get-go that no Republicans would vote for an Obama-backed bill and that to think otherwise was simply a waste of time and valuable political capital.  Shoulda just crammed it down their throats (which is what Democrats are having to do anyway).  I have to wonder what bill we could have gotten if the President had pushed the bill hard when his popularity was still high.

The irrational pessimism of Americans

A new Pew poll reveals that 44% of Americans think that China is the top global economic power while only 27% think the US is. 

While I think it is likely that China will eventually pass the US as the world's top economy, Americans need to familiarize themselves with a concept called "statistics" or "numbers".  The US' GDP is still three times as large as China's, comprising almost 25% of the entire GDP of the planet.  Think about that - the US accounts for 25% of the world's GDP, despite having under 5% of the world's population.  China, by contrast, has 20% of the world's population, but accounts for about 8% of the world's economy.  China is patently NOT the top economic power in the world - it isn't even close (currently).

HA! Take THAT, energy usage!

Kudos go out to the Rentals (my in-laws) for listening to my incessant energy conservation rants and buying a new refrigerator and chest-freezer.  They cut a whopping 5.4 kilowatts (from 19.9 kw/day to 14.4) a day from their electricity usage, saving 'em about $20 a month.

If your own 'fridge is more than 15 years old, it's good economic sense to replace it.  The energy savings will pay for the new refrigerator in 3-4 years.

Stamping out the lack of corruption to the north!

It never ceases to amaze me that the World's Most Powerful Country™ doesn't throw its weight around a little more. A perfect example: just to the north of Our Great Nation™ is a stinking, vile hole of a country named Kanada. Radiating an intolerable smugness that is obviously a part of their universal health care package, they are indeed fortunate that we've been too busy following which "Twilight" star is dating whom to stomp these "Kanadians" out of existence.

Now, though, they've gone too far. Transparency.org (another black hole of decency and enterprise) has released it's "annual" rankings of corruption. As if we need this list every single year! Geez, Transparency.org, if you're so "transparent", why do you need to be in the spotlight EVERY SINGLE YEAR? HUH?!!? Didn't think you had an answer for that, anti-wealth pinkos. IF (and it's a big if) you're the type to pay attention to drivel like "corruption", you might note with interest that the Paragon of Nations™ ranks 19th in "corruption". Since our country is by far the best in all things, ranking 19th means, by definition, that 19th is the best spot on this chart to be. Countries lower than us should be pitied and condescendingly told to clean up their acts (bad countries, bad!). Countries "higher" than us...well, they should be viewed with extreme skepticism. Obviously they have nothing to teach us, can provide no positive examples for us, so I can only conclude one thing: anyone "ahead" of us in this ranking should be destroyed. Oh, maybe not with nukes, although it HAS been a long time since we've lobbed a few of those bad boys around (and isn't your trigger finger as itchy as mine?), but somehow we need to wipe out these annoying little places that think they are, in some ineffable way, better than the best.

And we need to start with Kanada. Smug, annoying Kanada. Oooo, so WHAT if you have universal health care? OUR people are made stronger by lack of it! So WHAT if you rank higher in standard of living? And you think you're going to parade the fact that you rank 8th in the world in corruption in front of OUR faces? Do you really?

Tolerating countries who think they do ANYTHING better than us only weakens the USA. Tolerating it on our doorstep is like getting sand kicked in our faces at the beach in front of our mega-babe girlfriend (and you better believe the USA's date is the hottest ever!). Time to wake up, America! Time to do something about Kanada.

How much is freedom worth?

I watched a German film called "The Experiment".  In it, 20 men are paid about $3000 to be incarcerated for 2 weeks in a simulated prison.  8 men will be guards, 12 men will be prisoners.  The guards have to keep order and enforce a series of rules.  The prisoners have to agree to surrender their civil rights for the two weeks.  No physical violence can be used by either side (or the individual is kicked out of the study with no compensation).

My question to you:  would you do this?  You run a 60% chance of being stuck in a tiny cell for two weeks with 2 other people.  Would you willingly give up 2 weeks of your freedom for $3000?

Me?  No way.  I wouldn't do it for $30,000 - I'd probably go crazy in those 2 weeks (crazier than I already am).

Just a tip for the "homeless"

Before you ask me for change so you can get a Starbucks coffee (!), you might not want to check your voice mail on your cell phone right in front of me.

Get a grip, people!

I'm growing tired of the (anti-science) hysteria surrounding the Large Hadron Collider.  My favorite football columnist, Tuesday Morning QB (Greg Easterbrook) won't let go of his fear that the LHC could destroy the planet by creating black holes that could swallow the earth.  Egad - the black holes that _could_ be created (and it's uncertain if they will form at all) would be smaller than an atom and last a fraction of a second before evaporating harmlessly away.  Get it through your skulls, people - black holes do not actively suck things into them.  You have to be within the event horizon of the black hole to get pulled into it - the sun could turn to a black hole right now and Earth would not get sucked in!  Indeed, it would continue to orbit the black hole just as it orbited the sun because they'd have the same mass. Guess how much stuff would be within the event horizon of a sub-atomic black hole that exists for a few nanoseconds?  Yeah, noffin'. So the fear that the LHC could create black holes that could destroy the earth is unreasonable.  As is the fear that messing with such "extreme" energies such as the LHC can produce is possibly dangerous - folks, we're bombarded by much higher energy particles all the time in our upper atmosphere and *gasp* we're all still here.

But my favorite has to be the crackpot idea that is getting way too much play that God/Time is preventing the LHC from coming online - that the recent malfunction of the LHC due to a bird is due to the bird traveling back in time (this made Time magazine, people) to stop the LHC from coming online and destroying us all.  You.  Must.  Be.  Joking.  

I sometimes gnash my teeth at the level of general scientific knowledge in this country.

Give up marriage, Feds!

After the incredibly disappointing referendum result in Maine, I'm more convinced than ever that the federal government ought to declare marriage a religious-based institution, invoke separation of church and state and get out of the marriage business.  Declare instead that the government will institute civil unions, a purely legal construct between ANY two adults (parent/child, brothers, sisters, friends, lovers, you name it) that states that the two adults have legal standing to make decisions for each other, share wealth, get medical coverage, etc.  Then it's not a gay vs. straight issue - sexual orientation becomes completely irrelevant and we recognize that relationships beyond traditional marriage can have deep merit as well.  Lastly, the government could then declare that any marriage (purely a religious function performed in churches, synagogs, temples, etc.) would automatically qualify for civil union status.  Leave it up to individual religious houses to determine if they want to marry gays or not.

Take marriage out of the equation, generalize unions to all adults (rather than gay vs. straight) and the issue would, I believe, disappear quickly.  People are way too hung up on the term "marriage" - give it up, Feds!

Just lie until it's true

Senator McCain is weighing in on net-neutrality rules, trying to stop "government interference" of the telecom industry.  His completely inappropriately named "Internet Freedom Act", if passed, could allow for major telecom players to slow or block content originating on other networks.  My favorite lie of McCain's:  "Wireless carriers invested $100 billion in infrastructure and development over the past three years which has led to faster networks, more competitors in the marketplace and lower prices compared to any other country"

No, in fact I've seen a couple of studies, including this one or this one, which show US cellular bills to be among the highest in the world (note that the evil, horrible socialist countries have by far the lowest bills).  Then there's this study (from 2008) which shows that average US cell bills were up since 2005, running at $73 a month. But just keep lying, Senator - sadly, there are people who will believe you without being bothered by things like "facts".

But I'm just so sure that McCain is right!  After all, businesses have such a great track record of regulating themselves!

Technological transformations

Due to a blog post (below) I wrote, I've been thinking about what technology from the 20th century most transformed Americans in day-to-day life.  Oh, we swoon about the moonshot and gush about DNA, praise computers and thank the stars for antibiotics and modern medicine, but one thing occurred to me today as I crossed a street.  The technology that most radically changed the average American's life in the 20th century?  I have to go with television.

According to Neilsen, the TV ratings firm, the average American watches 4 hours and 35 minutes of TV a day.  That's over 30 hours a week!  Almost as much as the average American works.  Is there any technology that occupies our time so much?  Computers are approaching that, I admit, but the difference between TV and computers is not as great as TV and...whatever people did before TV.  Social interactions must be quite different, the world smaller, information flow faster - all as a result of TV.  TV probably played a major role in the sexual revolution and certainly in the war protests of the 60's and 70's which shaped the culture of a generation.  It's just interesting to me that such a transformative technology is so taken for granted that it took me days of mulling on the subject to say "oh yeah..."