Growing Old Disgracefully

kateoplis: “Calling the last four days of American life just…I mean, talk about a...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:30:38 -0400

kateoplis: “Calling the last four days of American life just…I mean, talk about a...:

“Calling the last four days of American life just…I mean, talk about a goddamned punch in the gut, citizens across the nation confirmed today that, Jesus, this week.

This fucking week, sources added.

Christ.

“Seriously, can we wrap this up already?” Maryland resident James Alderman told…

chopsueycinema: GPOY For every damn day

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:37:14 -0400

chopsueycinema:

GPOY

For every damn day

kateoplis: “If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 00:51:59 -0500

kateoplis: “If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with...:

kateoplis:

“If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with average talents and income, you would want to be a Viking. The Nordics cluster at the top of league tables of everything from economic competitiveness to social health to happiness. They have avoided both southern Europe’s economic…

"Being a little overweight may tip the odds in favor of living a long life, according to a new study...."

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 22:25:00 -0500

“

Being a little overweight may tip the odds in favor of living a long life, according to a new study. Researchers say there may be some benefit to having a little extra body fat.

This isn’t the first time researchers have raised questions about the link between body weight and how long someone will live. While there’s no debate that being severely obese will raise the risk of all kinds of illnesses and even cut some lives short, it’s less clear what happens to people who are less overweight.

”

- Research: A Little Extra Fat May Help You Live Longer (via npr)

Should I give up my New Year’s resolution to continue my plan since last Fall to drop 10 lbs then? Can a little extra body fat be a good thing? But apparently this study leaves too many questions unanswered. So never mind, let’s get rid of this lardbutt! With the help of an iPhone app called Lose It! and a small kitchen scale, I already lost about 7 lbs between the beginning of October and Christmas. (Haven’t gotten on the scale to see how much of that I gained back after a week of extra treats and without my treadmill walks.) Time to get back on track.

Rami Alkarmi ... arabia ..geeks 2.0 #digitalpower: I'm Just Not Ready To Accept That We Have To Have Gun Massacres All The Time

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 13:45:37 -0500

Rami Alkarmi ... arabia ..geeks 2.0 #digitalpower: I'm Just Not Ready To Accept That We Have To Have Gun Massacres All The Time:

ramialkarmi:

After the horrific slaughter of 12 people at a movie theater last summer, I was hoping it would be a few years before the next crazy American armed himself with legal guns and opened fire.

Unfortunately, it was only 6 months.

And this latest massacre is even more horrifying than the…

This morning, a crazy man attacked 22 school-children in China

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 13:36:58 -0500

This morning, a crazy man attacked 22 school-children in China:

kateoplis:

But no one died because he only had a knife.

Korean drama "Five Fingers"

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 15:16:00 -0400

What a tale! This melodrama has it all - Emotion! Love and hate! Good vs evil! Class and intergenerational conflict! Powerful ponderous music! Traumas from the past! Yelling and smashing things! Tantrums thrown! Fire! Fisticuffs! Blood! Murder!

Such weeping & wailing! Such scenery chewing! I’ll bet the actors had a blast filming this one.

"Watching Felix Baumgartner’s “space jump” was exciting, riveting and unnerving. It makes you wonder:..."

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:39:00 -0400

“Watching Felix Baumgartner’s “space jump” was exciting, riveting and unnerving. It makes you wonder: What if something had gone wrong?”

- A Day Later, The Space Jump Guy Is OK, But How About The Rest Of Us? : Monkey See (via npr)

Two things fall from the sky - bird sh*t and crazy people.

theeconomist: The genetics of politics: slowly, and in some...

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:31:42 -0400

theeconomist:

The genetics of politics: slowly, and in some quarters grudgingly, the influence of genes in shaping political outlook and behaviour is being recognised.

nationaljournal: Is your favorite beer related to how you...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:50:24 -0400

nationaljournal:

Is your favorite beer related to how you vote?

Wondering which brew you should sip at your Election night party? Reach for a Dos Equis if you want to appear bipartisan. If you’re a proud Republican, Sam Adams may be your beer. Heineken will be better received by your left-wing friends.

Find out how the data was found for this graph.

What do you think? Is this just silly or does your beer line up with your politics? (My favorite beer didn’t make the list).

?

Does this work? My husband, a liberal Democrat who votes in every election, loves Samuel Adams.

Driverless cars bill is signed

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 00:44:00 -0400

Driverless cars bill is signed:

zite.to

New legislation to bring driverless cars to California roads has been signed

I only regret that I’ll probably be dead before this technology becomes mainstream. I dreamed of cars like this back in the ’50s.

kateoplis: “WHEN Mitt Romney told the guests at a fund-raiser...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 18:17:18 -0400

kateoplis:

“WHEN Mitt Romney told the guests at a fund-raiser in Florida in May that America is divided between people who pay no income taxes and depend on government and pretty much everyone else, he missed the deeper truth. It is not just that most of the 47 percent Mr. Romney talked about do pay payroll taxes and that many of them have paid income taxes in the past. The reality he glossed over is that nearly all Americans have used government social policies at some point in their lives. The beneficiaries include the rich and the poor, Democrats and Republicans. Almost everyone is both a maker and a taker.

We have unique data from a 2008 national survey by the Cornell Survey Research Institute that asked Americans whether they had ever taken advantage of any of 21 social policies provided by the federal government, from student loans to Medicare. These policies do not include government activity that benefits everyone — national defense, the interstate highway system, food safety regulations — but only tangible benefits that accrue to specific households. The survey asked about people’s policy usage throughout their lives, not just at a moment in time, and it included questions about social policies embedded in the tax code, which are usually overlooked.

What the data reveal is striking: nearly all Americans — 96 percent — have relied on the federal government to assist them. Young adults, who are not yet eligible for many policies, account for most of the remaining 4 percent.”

We Are the 96 Percent | NYT

"I’m a Republican because I’ve lived a privileged life, whether I realize it or not. I’m comfortable..."

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:40:00 -0400

“I’m a Republican because I’ve lived a privileged life, whether I realize it or not. I’m comfortable assuming that because I had the tools to be successful at my disposal, they must be just as accessible to everyone else, and people who aren’t as successful as me just didn’t try hard enough. I’m a Republican because I don’t believe in the government controlling my life, but I believe in it controlling the lives of people who are not like me. I am Republican because I enjoy the advantage of being a white, heterosexual Christian, and I am a Republican because I want that to continue.”

- The short version of most of the answers given to NPR by RNC attendees when asked why they chose to be Republicans. (via kathleenthearsonist)

Goong - eccch!

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:27:58 -0400

Aaarrgggh! Got through “Goong (Princess Hours)”, painfully. Would the Crown Princess character really be considered appealing in Korean (or any other) society? The character’s exaggeratedly clumsy ditzy undignified clueless whiney childlike stupidity was excruciating to watch. This girl is supposed to be 19, not 12. The other characters of her age (except for her two goofy friends) are written as young adults far more advanced that this girl appears. I had to wonder how the other characters managed to refrain from killing her outright. How could anyone possibly find such a girl attractive or interesting?

I would be interested in other views on this character.

Joo Ji Hoon Ye gods. How did that get on my page?

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 10:31:00 -0400

Joo Ji Hoon

Ye gods. How did that get on my page?

"As best as I can tell, the recent arguments at the Supreme Court did not touch on a critical part of..."

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:46:28 -0400

“

As best as I can tell, the recent arguments at the Supreme Court did not touch on a critical part of the discussion about government’s role in health care: the broken market for private insurance. And I think I know why. A key assumption underlying the arguments, questions and answers was that all uninsured people are uninsured by choice.
…
It was as if the court forgot that the private insurance market does not function as a normal market. If you are not employed and you want to purchase insurance in the private market, you cannot unilaterally decide to do so. An insurer has to accept you as a customer. And quite often, they don’t. Insurers prefer group plans, with lots of people enrolled to spread the risk. Can you blame them? The individual consumer is a lot of work, is a higher risk and produces relatively little revenue.
…
Expect to be denied if you have asthma, if you take just about any prescription medication, if you are more than 15 percent overweight. Expect to be denied if a doctor has recommended any procedure for you, no matter how insignificant. Basically, expect to be denied.
…
I’m astonished that this information was not laid out in oral argument and that no questions were asked about it. I believe that lawyers on both sides of this argument, and the justices hearing the case, have always been employed and always been covered by employer-provided health insurance. Perhaps it simply does not occur to them that if they were to try to purchase insurance, they might not be able to.
…
The justices repeatedly asked: If the government can require you to purchase insurance, what else could it require you to do? What are the limiting conditions to this breadth of control?

The government muffed its response. To me, the answer is obvious. There are two simple limiting conditions, both of which must be present: (1) it must be a service or product that everybody must have at some point in their lives and (2) the market for that service or product does not function, meaning that sellers turn away buyers. In other words, you need something, but you may not be able to buy it.

”

- Healthcare Isn’t like Broccoli aka What Makes Healthcare Different aka The case for Obamacare (lowercase-c, Uppercase-O)

This is just an aside: Washington Post.com had a hard time settling on a title for this Op-Ed by Donna Dubinsky. But today, I found it.
(via jamilasays)

"Many liberals believe that the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — is unpopular only because most..."

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:43:08 -0400

“

Many liberals believe that the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — is unpopular only because most Americans don’t understand it. There is some truth to this: Studies show that the core provisions of the bill are more popular than the bill itself. But there’s also a reason, rooted in reality, why many Americans worry about Obamacare — its cost.

Most Americans have health care. What they worry about is the cost of insuring 20 million to 30 million more people. Unless the meteoric rise of health-care costs is slowed, a big expansion of coverage might well remain unpopular, no matter how it is explained.

Republican alternatives to Obamacare, such as Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan, don’t bother with expanding coverage, which is a mistake because they leave in place a broken insurance model in which people can freeload. But most do have a strategy to control costs — get consumers to pay for more of their health care. The basic idea is intuitively appealing. Markets produce efficiencies; they presumably would do the same thing in health care.

But the situation on the ground suggests that markets work imperfectly in this realm. A new study conducted by the pharmaceutical company Novartis and McKinsey and Co. shows a stunning difference among countries with regard to health-care efficiency.

For example: Smoking rates are higher in France than in the United States, so the French population has higher rates of lung disease. Yet the French system is able to treat the disease far more effectively than happens in the United States, with levels of severity and fatality three times lower than those in this country. And yet France spends eight times less on treatments per person than the U.S. system. Or consider Britain, which handles diabetes far more effectively than the United States, while spending less than half of what we spend per person. The study concludes that the British system is five times more productive in managing diabetes than is the United States.

To be fair, there is one case in which the United States does better, battling breast cancer, where early screening and easy access to advanced treatment make the country the most effective place to tackle that disease. But overwhelmingly, the most effective care for diseases come from countries with much lower costs.

To understand the issue better, I spoke with Daniel Vasella, the chairman (and former chief executive) of Novartis and a physician by training. He is also frankly pro-market and pro-American, both of which have made him a target for some criticism in Europe.

Vasella emphasized that there is no single model that works best, but he explained that France and Britain are better at tackling diabetes and lung disease because they take a systemic approach that gives all health-care providers incentive to focus on early detection and cost-effective treatment and that makes wellness the goal. “In America,” he said, “no one has incentives to make quality and cost-effective outcomes the goal. There are so many stakeholders and they each want to protect themselves. Someone needs to ask, ‘What are the critical elements to increase quality?’ That’s what we’re going to pay for, nothing else.”

I asked him whether the lesson he has drawn is that only the government can produce system-wide improvements. “It pains me to say this as a free-market advocate, but you have to have [the] government act in this case. Health care is very complex. Only at a systemic level can you figure out what works best based on the evidence, and what procedures and treatments are not worth the money,” he said.

Economists have often written about “the asymmetry of information” — areas where consumers are not expert enough to be able to determine what product is best. Evidence increasingly shows that this is true of health. After all, consumers freely make the choice to smoke, eat junk food and forgo preventative care, all of which are highly likely to make them sick, force up their health-care costs and lower their quality of life. Having us spend more of the money ourselves is unlikely to solve the cost crisis in health care.

”

- Fareed Zakaria, “Curbing the Cost of Health Care,” The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-curbing-the-cost-of-health-care/2012/07/04/gJQAxkr7NW_story.html
(via thebardofavon)

"My fellow residents and I don’t even talk about this bill even a little bit. Everyone’s made up..."

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:54:19 -0400

“My fellow residents and I don’t even talk about this bill even a little bit. Everyone’s made up their mind long before the ruling, and it splits according to what kind of specialty they are in. The surgeons and cardiologists tend to be against Obamacare but the primary care and family doctors tend to be for it. They’re really made up along politically ideologies and not related to substance. If they make a lot of money they want to keep on making a lot of money, and if they don’t they’d like to give better patient care.”

- Doctors React To The Survival Of Obamacare (via buzzfeed)

Self-interest trumps political ideology. Or rather, what we think are our political ideals comes down to what we think will benefit us most.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:41:38 -0400

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

"Participants not only reported liking the taste of the wine better if it was associated with a..."

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:01:37 -0400

““Participants not only reported liking the taste of the wine better if it was associated with a difficult to pronounce winery name. But they also reported about a $2 increase in willingness to pay””

- Fancy Names Can Fool Wine Geeks Into Paying More For A Bottle (via npr)