It seems that no one will be giving Catherine Ashton, the EU’s new foreign minister, any trouble. She has a full size Dalek sitting in the corner of her office.
I would assume she’s also packing a sonic screwdriver, so the EU should be ship-shape in Bristol fashion in no time.
There has been a maelstrom of news and opinion recently about the revised guidelines for mammograms and pap smears. On the one hand, it is either abysmal or fortuitous timing for these recommendations to emerge during a national debate on healthcare reform legislation. This is playing right into the hands of those who would have you irrationally believe the government is trying to ration your care in an effort to kill you. The reality is that timing aside, these recommendations and other scientifically based statistical studies are released all the time. And not just the government, but the insurance companies who already effectively control your access to healthcare make coverage decisions based on such studies.
The real issue here is the recommendations shine a glaring bright light on the reality that any insurance based healthcare plan balances the needs of the many against the needs of the few. This is not specific to government run vs. privately run plans. This is the reality that no group plan can afford to give everyone every last bit of diagnosis or care they might desire at a price we can collectively afford.
This is easy to understand at an impersonal level. It would be a waste of money to test everyone who came to the doctor with a cough for tuberculosis. The cough is weighed with other symptoms, including the clinical as well as the statistical likelihood the person could have been exposed. The reality is that this process misses a small percentage of cases that could have been caught early if everyone were tested at first phlegm. But the cost, anxiety, false positive rate, and inconvenience of all that testing is balanced against the actual number of cases slipping through the cracks. It’s impossible to seal all the cracks of all the diseases and conditions. Every doctor, every insurance company, every hospital, makes a cost benefit decision to determine the point of diminishing returns. They do this in full recognition that they are statistically condemning some small number of people to being undiagnosed.
This all makes sense at the dispassionate level of statistics. Any group health plan needs to draw the lines somewhere. Everyone cannot be entitled to unlimited care. But at the personal level, I want my family, my friends, my loved ones, even my-self to have access to the best of everything. If I could have my way, we’d all have one of those two-minute Star Trek medical scans every week to check for every known condition in the Star Fleet data bank, regardless of the cost to the insurance company. But in practice, if such a scan existed, and I was paying out of my pocket, and the scans cost $5000 each, would my kids get one every week? Every month? Every year? Just to be sure? Probably not.
All this puts me in a difficult position. I do understand the trade-offs, the statistics, and the economics of the situation. However, I have personally benefited from some aggressive, probably not statistically justified medical diagnostics. A few years ago, I went to the doctor for something unrelated and just mentioned in passing that I had an odd ringing in one ear. She knew it was probably nothing, but sent me to a specialist anyway. He concurred, but just to be sure, he sent me for an MRI because some insignificant portion of 1% of people with that symptom have a small brain tumor. They found and removed my tumor a few months later.
To be honest, had I been paying out of pocket and they had asked to run $5000 worth of tests to diagnose a ringing ear, just to be sure, I’d have probably said no thanks. If I had to appeal to an insurance company to cover the tests, I’d have probably acquiesced to the math and waited until my symptoms worsened. This would have resulted in treatment delays, a much worse prognosis, and I wouldn’t have the quality of life that I enjoy today. But it’s probably how it should have panned out.
The cruel reality is that all healthcare is about economics. Someone has to bear the cost of your care. Whether that cost is borne out of your pocket, your paycheck, or your taxes, it’s still a question of how much we can afford. There simply is a point where the cost is too high. The implication of that ceiling is that no matter where we put it, some small number of people will wind up sicker than they would have been if we’d pushed the ceiling a little higher. And we’re all okay with that as long as those “few people” are strangers in a statistical database.
Thomas Jefferson said, “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” And it would seem the we are brewing up what may be a batch of rebellion for 2012. That is, assuming that the Aztec God Quetzalcoatl doesn’t bring the world to an end, which would be maybe a bit too much rebellion.
American politics seems to be fracturing in interesting ways. On the far right, we have tea-party rock stars like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and the Fox pundit crew. They seem to have a solid hold on about 25% of the population, a non-trivial chunk of folks who would follow them off a cliff. Further, they have been driving moderates from their ranks in an effort to purify the herd into some sort of army of malcontents. They are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore. They don’t have a plan for anything better, but whatever this is, it has to stop.
There is some danger this could morph from a political rebellion into something more militant. Recently, there has been an emergence of the slogan, “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8.” The psalm reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” But precedes the more ominous passage, “May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow.” Former, right-wing evangelical leader Frank Schaeffer worries that this could be trolling for assassins. If some would-be soldier of God takes up this call, it could come back against the teabaggers, or it could cause them to bond even further. Either way, it looks increasingly like this group is going to become it’s own political party.
Should the Tea Party emerge, it will garner much news coverage because love them or hate them they are great entertainment. But they are unlikely to be directly relevant. They will be a permanent minority who’s main agenda will be to oppose whatever anybody else wants.
We are seeing aspects of the results of this today. The Republican minority is not really a functional adversary to the Democrats, and this has resulted in the Democrats fracturing internally between their liberals and conservatives. For lack of opposition, they’ve created their own. Add to this, the defection of moderate Republicans like Arlen Specter and the disenfranchisement of moderate Republicans in general and it would seem we have the recipe for a split of the Democratic party where moderate Republicans and Blue-Dog Democrats would bind and form a new right of center party.
This could create an interesting situation for American politics. Historically, when a new party rises, one of the old parties fall. But I can’t imagine the Tea Party folding in to any other organization. And with a quarter of the population locked in to irrelevance, the two functional parties are left such that neither can ever have a controlling majority. They would be forced to cooperate at some significant level to accomplish anything. And that would be a refreshing change.
Such is the nature of multi-party legislatures in other countries, and I’m curious if we could adapt our systems here to permanently accommodate multiple parties. It might just be the little bit of rebellion we’re looking for.
Spain has just joined the ranks of Finland in recognizing that broadband Internet access is no longer a luxury, but rather a basic necessity. Actually, Spain has declared it a basic legal right, which may be taking it a bit too far. But it would be great if this country would acknowledge that broadband access is at least on par with electricity and telephone service.
In the US, we subsidize electricity and phone service delivery to parts of the country where commercially such a service offering would not be feasible. We regulate those industries to be sure that access to quality service is affordable and reliable. It high time we step up and acknowledge that broadband access belongs in that club. And while we’re inducting new members, why not put cellular/wireless service in the club as well? Given the broadband-like speeds of the new 4G networks, wireless tech is soon to be a viable alternative to cable or DSL service.
It’s time to wake up and smell the broadband.
My apologies for the dearth of bacon-related posts recently. But maybe a seasonal smoked swine story will assuage you. With Christmas coming, I’m sure some of you are thinking ahead to sending out those holiday greeting cards or letters, because let’s face it, it’s only you guys and junk mail that are keeping the USPS alive at this point. Yet many of you are putting off this task as the prospect of licking a big stack of envelopes leaves a bad taste in your mouth only surpassed by actually licking the damned things. Never fear.
Introducing Mmmvelopes, envelopes with an eye catching bacon design on the outside to entice your friends and family to tear into them, and a tasty bacon flavored adhesive for you. Sending cheesy pictures of your kids to people you haven’t spoken with in 12 months never tasted so good.
INschools.net is an Internet management service that provides net access and web based services to many school districts in the state of Indiana. Like most school districts they implement a filtering policy to prevent access to inappropriate or harmful content using the school’s resources. These sorts of things usually include known sources of worms, tojans, and phishing attacks as well as P2P sites, porn sites, and other places that usually constitute the “dark side” of the web. That’s all well and good, and a reasonable thing for a school, corporation, or any private network provider to do. But Indiana has taken this to a whole new level with a policy that prevents access to a wide array of content, which to my interpretation, should include access to the school’s own website.
Some of the categories of blocked content include:
Alternate Spirituality or Belief which starts by explicitly blocking sites providing information on witchcraft, Satanism, or atheism. So no one at Indiana will be reading my blog, doing research on the Salem Witch Trials, or learning about Harry Potter. They then go on to exclude sites providing information on “any other form of mysticism”. You’d think a school might have looked up the meaning of that word as they just eliminated access to any and all religious sites.
Alternative Sexuality/Lifestyles which blocks access to any sites dealing with gay or lesbian issues. The wording is so general that they clearly block access to sites that might help gay teens struggling with their identity. Apparently if you’re gay in Indiana, keep it to yourself and deal with it.
Weapons which again is general enough that the History Channel and most sites providing military or war based information would be against school policy.
But my favorite is their wide sweeping ban on sites providing information on Violence/Hate/Racism. The policy states a prohibition against sites that, “denigrate an individual or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, or other involuntary characteristics.” Bingo Indiana. You just prohibited access to your own site where this clearly denigrating policy is found.
When you’re thinking of relaxing, you don’t usually imagine that you’ll voluntarily stick your noggin into something that looks a bit like a sarlacc infested Pit of Carkoon hat.
But if you can overcome those fears and have the neck strength to keep this puppy aloft, and don’t mind having your hair swirled into a hopelessly matted mess, then has Kinatech got a head massager for you!
You can practically feel the stress draining from your body and moving swiftly to those around you who are watching this zombie-inspired cranium cap suckle at your brain. Order soon! Those remaining holiday shopping days are counting down fast!
This is either the freakiest or coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time. It’s an implantable subcutaneous display. Essentially it’s a digital tattoo that would be placed beneath your skin. And the freaky part? It’s powered by your blood. It actually uses the glucose in your blood to generate electricity! I’m somewhat relieved that this is only a concept at this point, but the applications of this are enormous and frightening.
This display could be your mobile phone display, but on your arm. Or it could be a configurable tattoo, such that your tat could match your outfit or your mood. But this could be taken to a larger scale with social and ethical implications. Could I sell ad space on my body? If I walk down the street without a shirt and the big display in my back is showing a movie I purchased, is that a public showing and hence illegal? And if this thing really burns blood sugar, could this energy drain be used to manage your diabetes or even your weight? What if it metabolized alcohol rather than sugar. Could it be used to keep people from getting above a certain BAC level?
The mind boggles…
Men would no longer dread shopping trips with women if more stores provided built-in manpods. These are being installed in London in time for the holiday shopping season.
You can enjoy a little HDTV or a movie on Blu-Ray, have a pint or two, and then carry all your lady’s shopping booty to the car when she’s done wearing the numbers off your credit card.
Apparently, if you really like the experience, you can even purchase a manpod to install in your own home. Although fair warning, such a purchase may be perceived as indicative of a different domestic problem than she simply wants to go shopping but can’t bear to be without you.
It was actually kind of fun when IM, texting, and Tweeting brought a new shorthand language into common use. At first, I was thinking these people were BBFBBM, but @TEOTD it was all harmless and J4F. Although it had a practical purpose as well. Expressing thoughts in fewer characters allowed for longer more complex messages to be sent quickly or via tools that limited the total size of a message.
In this same spirit, I was able to forgive, although never quite join in, the trend to eliminate punctuation and capitalization in messages. Capitals and punctuation are cumbersome on most phones (especially those without QWERTY keyboards), and that’s where many of these messages originated. And when you’re limited to 140 characters, every dropped comma can help get a 10-pound message stuffed into a 5-pound bag.
However, the current rage in this arena defies logic. Messages have words in them with repeated characters, similar to the title of this post. This is not a spelling deficiency or a typo. These are intentional extra characters. This is not a shortcut as more characters clearly means more button pushes to compose the message. What’s the deal then? The major perpetrators of this are kids. Is this just the latest fad to annoy parents and get them to lament about the fate of the next generation? Maybe in part, but I think there’s more.
As near as I can tell, the extra letters amount to punctuation. In most of the messages I’ve seen, the additional characters show up at the end of words where you might normally find a punctuation mark. Is it possible kids are copping to the fact that even short messages gain nuance and understanding with appropriate punctuation? Maybe. Although, it’s still pretty primitive since there is only a single punctuation mark. There’s no distinction between the causal pause of a comma and the punch of an m-dash. Yet maybe that’s a lost distinction on a generation that largely believes a semi-colon is the result of a botched rectal exam.
And even if it is intended as the universal punctuation mark, a call back to the good old days of telegrams STOP where all you had was a single grammatical break STOP I remain nonplussed. Using a period or a comma universally would suffice as well.
The damned kids these days are doing this, at least in part, just to tweak us old folks. They can’t abuse us with the loud rock-n-roll music because we play it too. We dress in Jeans and T’s. We took over Facebook on them. We text on our phones with wild abandon. You had to know they were going to make a stand somewhere. This is it.
Today’s youth are making their stand with superfluous letters, and it’s working. This is rising rapidly on the Pet Peeve scale for us codgers. So to today’s teens I say, “Well played… and get off my lawn!”
I once worked with a guy who said that he felt entitled to use all the Styrofoam coffee cups he pleased as long as he never procreated. His theory being that the ecological impact of adding another human being to the planet was far greater than any casual careless polution he was likely to produce on his own. At the time, that seemed like a keen bit of rationalization for being environmentally insensitive. However, I’ve since screwed that plan up a couple of times over.
However, I just stumbled on this graphic that shows that owning a dog has a way bigger footprint than driving an SUV. Therefore, I can rationalize driving my big honkin’ truck as long as I keep my house puppy-free. So far, so good. And for good measure, I’m staying clear of hamsters too. That ought to cover my use of plastic shopping bags.
