I read yesterday that the average annual bill for prescription medicine among the retired elderly is about $3,100, and some people have annual bills of over $13,000 for medicines necessary to keep them alive. For anyone other than the filthy rich this is a staggering amount of money, all the more so when you consider that old people don't have earned incomes. I can sympathize with their call for federal prescription drug benefits to help ease this burden.
But although I sympathize, I'm not sure I support such a call. I don't know if I like the idea of using tax dollars to buy drugs for old people, especially when we don't use tax dollars to provide basic health benefits to the general non-elderly population and the law prevents us from buying particular recreational drugs as we may desire, even when these drugs are just plants and fungus. I'm not trying to turn a cold shoulder to old people here, but it just doesn't seem to be appropriate.
I like old people. I think they are pretty cool and I wish the nation as whole took greater pride in and care of our older generations. Their experiences over the last century are unique in the history of the universe and it is a shame to not capitalize on their wisdom and experiences more. Old people are a national treasure, a resource to be cherished and honored.
But when your time comes, your time comes. The human body isn't supposed to last for a 100 years, especially considering the stress we put it through in the environments we live in. Bodies wear out, plain and simple. I don't think it is the best idea to use our collective financial resources paying for kidney dialysis and hypertension pills.
This is a difficult opinion to hold though becuase it feels so heartless. I think that part of it rests with our collective fear of death and shame associated with the passing of a life. Death is a nasty thing, hidden away and treated as an enemy that we have to combat with the aim of conquering. This leads us to despise death instead of embracing it as the final chapter of the incredible rollercoaster ride of life. Death is inevitable, and if we recognize this and life our lives with an eye to it, we may instill a new sense of purpose and accomlishment, not to mention better health habits.
In a nation of overweight, diabetic, underexercised, smoking couch potatoes, the idea that we should spend our tax money on financing life past its due date strikes me as wrong, as a way of running away from facing up to moral responsibility and a perpetuation of the nasty habit of focusing on treating the systems instead of teh causes of a problem.
I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't offer health benefits or insurance coverage to people. I DO support that idea. I'd even support providing chemical crutches to people below the average life span. But once you beat the odds and pass the average age, no more subsidies and welfare. Life with dignity and allow the nation to collective invest in the next generation, providing benefits for children and those still in the prime earning and caregiving years.
But if my opinion on this would be adopted by a majority, it would have to be accompanied with a sense of respect and gratitude to the elderly, for we are choosing to force them to continue to provide for themselvse long after they have given of themselves to others. It's a tough position to take, and I am not really excited to hold this opinion, but I can't help it.
Then again, maybe shunting some of the billions (that is thousands of millions) of dollars we spend on building weapons would solve the problem. I'd be happiest if this were to happen, but the realist in me knows that the (current, at least) powers that be would never concede to the value of that.
Serial killer or Computer Language inventor?
I got 7/10, same as dougal, so I don't feel so bad.
I used to think that electronic voting was a needed killer app for modern democracy. I felt it would empower the masses and bring democracy back into the people's hands, away from the representative system we have here. My idealism yet again fell victim to the reality of computer systems, as the security mandates involved in massive online voting fall short in so many ways.
But now it turns out that the dangers from the outside are being usurped by the dangers from the inside. Get this: the people who are making the electronic voting machines are ardent Republican supports and the head of Diebold has been quoted as saying that he is commited to delivering electoral votes to the incumbent President next year.
Not only that, but the machines themselves are black boxes. We, the public, don't have any access to how they work and what they do when votes are tallied, processed, and sent. Apparenlty, the machines are also being used to count the votes as they come in, a legal no-no. Votes are only countable after voting has closed (but polling of voters after they've cast their ballot is okay).
This is a bad thing brewing here. We've got courts upholding the use of hokey punch-card machines in California, Supreme Courts denying recounts of ballots to determine Presidents, and now big money contributors to particular parties are put in charge of voting mechanisms with no public oversight? C'mon people!
I met a Japanese woman the other day who told me she had only been to the US once, to Los Angeles for a few days. My first response "Why would anyone want to go to Los Angeles?!?" but I bit my tongue and made polite statements about her trip. She apparently went as a tourist, but all I know is that she went to Universal Studios one day. She may have been visiting a friend too, I dunno.
This made me realize how little esteem I have for L.A. Seriously, is there anything about that city that is attractive? I'm sure I'm just uninformed and ignorant about how great life can be in a smog blanketed, crime infested, urban wasteland dominated by, uh, the type of people who live in L.A. No overgeneralizations or stereotypes in my world, no way!
I assume that tourist to LA don't see the bits of LA that make me cringe at the thought of visiting. They see family and friends, check out the beach maybe, go shopping, hit some big theme parks, whee-la! But maybe some of them would be interested in seeing the darker side of life, the reality of what life in LA can be like.
So I thought about ghetto tours. Get a couple people, load them in a car, and cruise through the degenerate neighborhoods. Expose them to the utter decay that typifies American urban cores and see what it does to their worldview.
Then reality kicked in and it became clear that the liability on such a venture would be insurmountable. Once the ghetto clued in to what was going on, the tours would become targets faster than a street clears during a drive-by, either driving by sport or profit-motive. You'd have to outfit your tour rigs with bullet-proof glass and hire serious drivers and security goons armed and ready to return fire. But that would only make the vehicles even easier to identify. Might as well paint them white with concentric red circles on them.
But what if...
What if you could buy up a huge a tract of land in the ghetto and fence it off, with serious security that keeps the riff-raff out. It would have to be big, like a square mile or two. You could make it cheap, get government subsidy or something. Security controls would keep guns, drugs, and evildoers out, the people inside get to live a normal life. Their only responsibility would be to live like actors, the pimps, thugs, and whores that add color to the streets (damn, that is a bad pun, but it wasn't intentional and I'm not taking it out). The tours could be conducted from a big building on the fringe that was built in a way to keep the ruse hidden. It would basically be like Jurassic Park on crack, only no electric fences, no dinosaurs, and no real crack. You could probably orchestrate some street fights, burning cars, and potshots at the tour vehicle for spice though if needed.
Whaddaya think? How much could we charge for a tour of depravity?
(Editor's note: What this entire idea really illustrates is the depths to which a person can plumb to avoid working on their dissertation.)
I don't get to watch the Daily Show over here and in fact I've only seen it once, last June when I was in Hawaii for a conference, just happened to stumble across it on cable. Pretty good show indeed.
Anyway, Al Franken was on it recently, and if you missed it, Lisa Rein is hosting the clip. A big thanks to her for hosting.
If you don't have quicktime installed, you'll need to. Be sure to check out the movie trailers page once you do as well.
Here we find information about an upcoming technology that is really exciting. I've wished for years for efficient transparent photovoltaic cells to use as windows, and it looks like someone has come up with something even better.
It's a tiny solar panel about half an inch square that is over 50% efficient now (and perhaps 100% eventually) that is embedded in glass and serves as a window blind. The coolest thing: the cell rotates to face the sun at all times! The energy it sucks up is piped into the building grid to augment heating and cooling and all that other jazz. Researchers hope to have it available in as little as 3 years.
If we ever get efficient solar power and establish a network for storing it (either in hydrogen or flywheels), it'll be a big deal. The sooner the better too, because even though we won't run out of oil for 80 years or more, our demand is set to outpace production within a generation.
WiredNews notes that the new security environment enacted by the Justice Department of the United States is decimating our research labs nationwide. Our ability to attract new students for research training has been blocked by 20% and research into particular pathogens or other areas of scientific interest are being curtailed, much of it voluntarily in response to DOJ requests. But some of it is being shut down by administrative fiat or indirectly due to the restrictive hassles imposed on researchers who want to continue their research.
Classic Form VS Function decision that yet again errs on the form side. These regulations might look like a good idea but they don't help at all. The research momentum that the national scientific community loses is far more damaging than any potential threat that may be incurred from the research. Even more telling is that while the risk that research could provide info that someone could use to hurt others, that risk is miniscule compared to the absolute and guaranteed damages we take in restricting our research activity.
I haven't really laid out my ideas about human inventiveness yet, but I feel that we've made mistakes in the past by doing things simply because we can instead of thinking about if we should. Just because a door is unlocked doesn't mean we should open it and wander around on the other side. While these attempts by the DOJ to secure us are nice attempts to get us thinking about the needs of researching particular areas, it makes the same kind of mistakes by ordering us to lock every unlocked door we find. We need a better sense of balance and a long-term outlook that treats each case on its own merits. If the current freeze on research keeps up, we'll find that the research is going on elsewhere. The end result is that the research still happens, only we lose our competitive edge. Perhaps not a bad thing, though...
Today, the Japanese gastric cancer surgeon I have English conversation classes with told me about his colleague that keeps a tapeworm in a jar in his office. This colleague had been infected with the tapeworm by unbeknownst means and only discovered it after losing too much weight for unexplained reasons. The tapeworm was identified and he was able to get rid of it by abstaining from solid food (receiving nutrition via IV) and flushing his system with diarrhea inducing chemicals. The tapeworm came out dead and intact. This guy seems rather proud of it and shows it off to people. In the words of my student/doctor as he summed up the story: "No! Why?"
It made me wonder if there was a market for tapeworm dieting though. It is a bit of a repulsive thought, but its a simple process. The hardest parts are getting the worm to grow and then to ensure that it dislodges completely instead of just shedding off its tail end. But think about it: it's totally natural and you wouldn't have do anything but eat normally. The extra organism in your gut would be absorbing calories instead of you. Then at the end you just need to take a weekend to flush it out and you are free and clear. The flushing bit would necessitate medical oversight, but its a good opportunity to set up a spa/ weight control facility and collect some extra charges.
This is such a stupid idea it would only work if one charged absolutely exorbitant fees to make it look justifiable. But with Americans slowly eating themselves to death and our infamous laziness about doing anything to improve our lives, this kind of hands off treatment might hit big.
Then again, maybe not.
What kind of world do we want to live? Are we even having a dialogue dealing with this issue? I find so frustrating that we, as a species, are so incredible complex and capable in so many absolutely stunning ways, yet we still act like imbecilic trolls most of the time. In spite of all of our advances, have we progressed? Technologically, progress is undeniable. Politically, we've transformed the nature of human society many times over. But do these circumstances warrant the designation of progress?
Technological progress is mostly a matter of accident. We are a curious animal and started poking around and asking some good questions at a certain point and slowly developed a body of knowledge allowing us to manipulate the world in incredible ways. But so what? What have we done with it? Longer survival rates for citizens in developed nations? Stood on the moon? Figured out faster way to communicate over longer distances? What else? Technological advances primarily come in two forms: military or economic. Neither of these are really good candidates for gauging progress. One is designed to kill and destroy and the other is based on selfish material cultivation. Not really species advancement. Just doing the same old shit with fancier methods and bigger explosions.
Politically its not really any better. As our technology developed, more people were living longer so we were forced into developing better methods of dealing with them. But its always been about lowest common denominators. What is the minimum that those in power have to do to stay in power? Look at a group and answer that question and you'll be able to predict what their society and government looks like pretty accurately. It may appear to have gotten better over the last 100 years, but it hasn't. A few societies have better educated masses so the minimum needed to keep them satiated has risen a few notches, so the advancements don't really reflect an actual change in thought and behavior, just a tweak on the old system.
I don't think this is due to an inescapable aspect of human nature though. Human nature isn't really all that behavior specific in the strictest sense. We have a lot of default modes of perceiving, organizing behavior, and acting on the world, but this can usually be updated and overridden by symbolic thought. We see it all the time in particular cultural expressions, education, and philosophy.
Where am I going with this? I dunno, to be honest, but it was on my mind and I want to keep some activity on here. Sorry for the incomplete thought. Hopefully more on this sooner than later.
I teach a class entitled "Living in a post-9/11 World" at a women's college in Japan. In this class, I get them to think about the economic, political, and military realities that brought us to where we are today and restrict our options for future development. Today I had them break into groups and work on an optimistic exercise. I asked them to imagine the best plausible future for the world, specifically with regard to the relationships between the G-8 nations, the Middle East, the United Nations, IMF, WTO, etc. My plan was to get some plausible scenarios on the table and to get them thinking about the interplay between these institutions. I asked them to set ideal goals for 5, 10, and 20 years down the line.
As I walked around to each group, most groups were doing well, but one group was stuck. They said they were having trouble because every time they started to think about a positive future scenario, they felt it was a pointless waste of time because there was no way things were going to turn out that good. I reminded them that in the depths of the cold war nuclear annhilation seemed unavoidable, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict has taken surprisingly positive turns as well as negative ones, and that the Troubles in Northern Ireland have come under resolution. As bleak as it may seem, times to change.
But as I thought about it, I realized that these examples aren't necessarily reliable prognostics. The Cold War ended because one side collapsed under its own unsustainable weight and the other two problems proved to only be solvable by the combatants themselves. The conflict between modernity and religious fundamentalism isn't going to end with the collapse of the economy of one side or the other; they aren't tied to physical reality enough to be subject to that kind of pressure. And while it may seem that the combatants are modern nations vs fundamentalist nations (namely Euro-America vs the Middle East), the basic battleground is within the non-modern nations themselves. There really isn't much that outside nations can do to fix the political, economic, and religious states of these nations (unless you consider the approach taken in Iraq to be a viable solution.)
So where does that leave us? I'm trying hard to be a realist, but at times that can lead to defeatism and complacency with the current order, so a healthy does of idealism is needed. Idealism that isn't based on reality is doomed to inefficiency and ineffectiveness, so one has to be realistic. First of all, 10 and 20 years doesn't seem all that far away, and it isn't, but at the same time, there is plenty of time for change. Leaders die or are changed in elections, populations can develop ideas and desires with faddish speed, so it isn't unreasonable to hold out hope for sudden, unexpected, drastic change. But all the same, change has to come from within, and that just doesn't look like it is going to develop soon. And with outside nations only succeeding (apparently) in stirring the up a bee's nest with their good intentions, is there any rationale reason to be positive?
The changes in FCC regulations that relaxed limitations on concentration of media ownership were supposed to have gone into effect last week but were blocked, as a whole, by a judge who ordered a suspension of the implementation until after the resolution of a suit filed by a group of radio stations against the FCC.
From the CNET article:
The rules that were blocked by the court include one that would permit the same company to own newspapers and broadcast stations in the same city and another that would allow a company to own as many as three television stations and eight radio stations in the same market.
The article doesn't really explain exactly what the radio stations were suing over, but apparently their suit is based on a derelection of duty charge of sorts against the FCC. The view that the changes weren't appropriate seems to be popular in Washington, at least when one considers that both the House and the Senate have introduced legislation aimed at undoing some of the rule changes.
I just don't accept the argument that the internet is the great equalizer of media access. For one, the internet is only accessible to those people who have computers, internet access, and are sitting at the computer in order to read news on a computer screen. Radio is media in transit, and the TV is community passive reception. A newspaper is portable and easy to read. Combined, I find it hard to believe that they don't constitute a majority of media exposure for a majority of people. Allowing a single company to control nearly half of a market, much less a monopoly of all three outlets in a city, just isn't healthy. It isn't inherently dangerous, but it is just too risky. One's opinion of the value of Fox News aside, the impact of the ownership on the editorial slant of the network is indisputable. Do we want a system that permits Murdoch (or even a liberal clone) to control all the news a group of people get?
Yay for democracy!
Many people have heard the bushwacked version of the 2003 State of the Union address, but I have just been alerted to the presence of a video version that is even more realistic. The addition of the video images makes the cut up audio even smoother. Very well done.
It made me wonder what media archaeologists of 4000 years hence would make of our era if they discover this remnant of history rather than the actual recording. Kind of like the phone call that Madeline Stowe made in 12 Monkeys.
Cringely misquoted the title of an essay in an article a couple weeks ago and I'm using that title as search engine bait. Of course its a little late now, but his column is still recent enough that I might get picked up by the search engines and someone might read the Cringely article late and try to find the essay (like I did) and then end up here, increasing my increasingly diminishing readership.
This worked for brand new blogger Art Kleiner, might as well work for us too. Welcome to the blogging world, Art!
If you are such a person and found your way here via this route, welcome! Poke around and read a couple more articles. There is some good stuff here, prescient and relevant and thought provoking. Even better, if you come back in a few days, there will be more! Cheers!
Given that both of my parents know about Google, it's ubiquity as the finest search engine is incontestable. It's fairly to obvious anyone that has used Google that it has a spell check for your search terms, offers translation for many languages, caches its search pages (so you can see stuff as it was when Google trawled it, kind of like The Wayback Machine at times), and it will search for similar sites to the results it kicks back (Google ranks results according to how often other people link to them, so being able to search for similar pages can be neat-o when the page rank doesn't quite give you what you want.).
But did you know that Google does other neat stuff too? If you click the underlined search term in the blue bar at the top of the results page, you'll be taken to a definition of the terms you search. If you type in a mathematical equation in the search field (even if its a browser toolbar and not www.google.com) using parentheses and +-*/ for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division respectively, it will calculate for you?
Typing in an address (city and street typically suffice) will get you a map, whereas a name or phone number will kick back phone book info. You can limit the google search to particular sites by suffixing your search with site:www.the-domain-you-want-to-limit-the-search-to.com. Try link:www.domain.com to see what sites are linking to you. (FYI, our beloved gusalmighty is only linked to by 3 sites, whereas that hack over at suckful has 6 pages of linkage. Let's fix that by spamming gusalmighty to Wallace and back!) Google will also give you stock quotes if you run a search on the ticker tag.
There is other neat stuff behind the scenes in the Google Labs and of course, their neat history of special logos.
Google, so much more than just a search engine.
Wow! It's an 8 minute movie short but is incredibly good. There is a "making of" available for download as well that runs almost twice as long and is almost as good as well. Whether you be a comic fan or not, pop over and get this movie. It is a 160 MB big version (48 Megs for small, but don't bother) and 81MB behind the scenes. I was blown away. It cost about $4,000 a minute to make, so don't think that it is a low-budget home movie.
This may be well know around the net these days, I dunno. Usually when I find something really cool, its because I'm on the trailing edge of the loop.