12.26.2009
12.24.2009
Oh, Fuck You, Natalie Angier!
"Sorry Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too."
OK... 80% of this piece concerns plant biology, which is perfectly appropriate in a Science article. As you might have guessed from the title, Ms. Angier has discovered that plants are much more than the inanimate objects that rabbits and Sensitive Liberals eat. Vegetative plants actively defend themselves from predators, communicate with one another, compete for resources, etc. This isn't exactly breaking news, but whatever. Neat article.
I do have a real problem with the title & the lede, though. Obviously, the title is meant to grab attention. It got mine, all right. In the first paragraph, she describes the sorts of things that she herself does and does not eat. Her own food choices are "arbitrary and inconsistent", she says. I assume that this is her evidence for this conclusion: "Food choices are often like that: difficult to articulate yet strongly held."
Um, maybe for you. Ironically, the second paragraph is devoted to some poorly-chosen "quotes" from two bestselling novelists and a philosophy professor, leading vocal veg'ns who can and do articulate their food choice convictions quite well.
But this Science writer isn't going to sit there while she is made to feel guilty by these jerks who pen compelling moral arguments against consuming animals!
"Hey, you preachy bleeding-heart nerds! Science says that plants are alive, and attempt to stay alive! That means you're a murderer too! Ever think about that? BOOYA! I guess this means you should just give up." (paraphrased)
"...before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way."
(actual quote)
Are you fucking kidding me? Plants are alive (or, "lively", right?), and are therefore of the same order as a hog? This is your argument? How old are you? For that matter, how dare you? Do you realize that you're effectively scolding veg'ns for killing those poor helpless plants in between bites of your Whopper?
You are (supposed to be) writing a SCIENCE column in the Times. Your argument is laughable, trite even, and it's completely irrelevant to the majority of your piece. Which is to say, what you're supposed to be writing about.
You fucking suck, lady. GOOD DAY TO YOU.
12.22.2009
Kim Peek
Kim Peek died of a heart attack on 19 Dec, at the age of 58. He is survived by his father, Fran.
Peek was, of course, the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's character Raymond Babbitt in "Rain Man".
"Peek has been called a "mega-savant" for his ability to memorise to the word up to 12,000 books, including the Bible and the Book of Mormon. He could read two pages in about 10 seconds – the right page with his right eye and the left simultaneously with his left eye.
He knew phone books by heart, and could tell you what day of the week a particular date fell upon going back decades. One of his party tricks was to tell strangers the names of the people who used to live next door to them years ago."
[link]
Nurses Union: This Bill Sucks
"While members of the Obama administration and key Senators [and many progressives!-kev] claim that the legislation should be enacted because it seeks to expand coverage, places new regulations on insurers and might be improved in the House-Senate conference committee, NNU (National Nurses United) co-president Deborah Burger, RN, offers a more realistic diagnosis:
"Those wishful statements ignore the reality that much of the expanded coverage is based on forced purchase of private insurance without effective controls on industry pricing practices or real competition and gaping loopholes in the insurance reforms."
The NNU cites the following major flaws in the Reid bill:
1. The individual mandate forcing all those without coverage to buy private insurance, with insufficient cost controls on skyrocketing premiums and other insurance costs.
2. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.
3. An affordability mirage. Congressional Budget Office estimates say a family of four with a household income of $54,000 would be expected to pay 17 percent of their income, $9,000, on healthcare exposing too many families to grave financial risk.
4. The excise tax on comprehensive insurance plans which will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies, especially as more plans are subject to the tax every year due to the lack of adequate price controls. A Towers-Perrin survey in September found 30 percent of employers said they would reduce employment if their health costs go up, 86 percent said they'd pass the higher costs to their employees.
5. Major loopholes in the insurance reforms that promise bans on exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and no cancellations for sickness. The loopholes include:
· Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail "wellness" programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.
· Insurers are permitted to sell policies "across state lines", exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states.
· Insurers can charge four times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.
· Insurers may continue to rescind policies for "fraud or intentional misrepresentation" – the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel coverage.
6. Minimal oversight on insurance denials of care; a report by the California Nurses Association/NNOC in September found that six of California's largest insurers have rejected more than one-fifth of all claims since 2002.
7. Inadequate limits on drug prices, especially after Senate rejection of an amendment, to protect a White House deal with pharmaceutical giants, allowing pharmacies and wholesalers to import lower-cost drugs.
8. New burdens for our public safety net. With a shortage of primary care physicians and a continuing fiscal crisis at the state and local level, public hospitals and clinics will be a dumping ground for those the private system doesn't want.
9. Reduced reproductive rights for women.
10. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; healthcare remains a privilege, not a right.
[link to article]
"Those wishful statements ignore the reality that much of the expanded coverage is based on forced purchase of private insurance without effective controls on industry pricing practices or real competition and gaping loopholes in the insurance reforms."
The NNU cites the following major flaws in the Reid bill:
1. The individual mandate forcing all those without coverage to buy private insurance, with insufficient cost controls on skyrocketing premiums and other insurance costs.
2. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.
3. An affordability mirage. Congressional Budget Office estimates say a family of four with a household income of $54,000 would be expected to pay 17 percent of their income, $9,000, on healthcare exposing too many families to grave financial risk.
4. The excise tax on comprehensive insurance plans which will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies, especially as more plans are subject to the tax every year due to the lack of adequate price controls. A Towers-Perrin survey in September found 30 percent of employers said they would reduce employment if their health costs go up, 86 percent said they'd pass the higher costs to their employees.
5. Major loopholes in the insurance reforms that promise bans on exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and no cancellations for sickness. The loopholes include:
· Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail "wellness" programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.
· Insurers are permitted to sell policies "across state lines", exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states.
· Insurers can charge four times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.
· Insurers may continue to rescind policies for "fraud or intentional misrepresentation" – the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel coverage.
6. Minimal oversight on insurance denials of care; a report by the California Nurses Association/NNOC in September found that six of California's largest insurers have rejected more than one-fifth of all claims since 2002.
7. Inadequate limits on drug prices, especially after Senate rejection of an amendment, to protect a White House deal with pharmaceutical giants, allowing pharmacies and wholesalers to import lower-cost drugs.
8. New burdens for our public safety net. With a shortage of primary care physicians and a continuing fiscal crisis at the state and local level, public hospitals and clinics will be a dumping ground for those the private system doesn't want.
9. Reduced reproductive rights for women.
10. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; healthcare remains a privilege, not a right.
[link to article]
Bill Moyers
It really sucks that he's retiring. Bill Moyers is one of the last independent journalists on television.
I love watching The Journal because Moyers and his guests always have a rational, thoughtful conversation, with no one shouting down anyone else. Also, instead of tiptoeing around troubling issues, they dig in. Also also, nobody asks a follow-up like Bill Moyers.
The latest episode of The Journal features Rob Kuttner and Matt Taibbi, and was particularly interesting. Give it a watch if you give a shit.
Too bad about Taibbi's haircut though.
I love watching The Journal because Moyers and his guests always have a rational, thoughtful conversation, with no one shouting down anyone else. Also, instead of tiptoeing around troubling issues, they dig in. Also also, nobody asks a follow-up like Bill Moyers.
The latest episode of The Journal features Rob Kuttner and Matt Taibbi, and was particularly interesting. Give it a watch if you give a shit.
Too bad about Taibbi's haircut though.
Nailed It
"I've been fairly repulsed by the 2003-like swarming, bullying efforts of the President's loyal supporters (both in the White House and from Beltway journalists and their partially cloned liberal bloggers) not merely to dispute, but to demonize and personally discredit, the bill's progressive critics as insane, crazy, childish, idiotic and drugged-out, Naderite, purist liars who -- we now learn today -- are the equivalent of "global warming denialists." "
It is sad to note that Mr. Silver at fivethirtyeight.com is among them. The esteemed statistician defends his points well, as always, but methinks he's missing the point:
"Well, the whole point of the public option originally was that if you’re going to mandate that people buy health insurance, then it is only a legitimate and moral thing to do if you actually provide them with a public-run program, so that the health insurance industry, which is notorious for gouging people and for engaging in all sorts of nefarious business practices, can’t use the mandate to essentially get 30 million new customers and then gouge them for profits while providing them with virtually no services.
And the argument of Howard Dean and others is that this bill actually does more harm than good. The argument is not, well, since it’s not pure enough ideologically or it’s not perfect, it should be defeated; the argument is that it actually does more harm than good, because it reinforces the monopoly status of the private healthcare industry and, at the same time, forces huge numbers of Americans, many of whom will not be able to afford it, to buy products that are inadequate and that they do not want. It perpetuates the very system that supposedly was the impetus in the first place for healthcare reform to pass."
And the argument of Howard Dean and others is that this bill actually does more harm than good. The argument is not, well, since it’s not pure enough ideologically or it’s not perfect, it should be defeated; the argument is that it actually does more harm than good, because it reinforces the monopoly status of the private healthcare industry and, at the same time, forces huge numbers of Americans, many of whom will not be able to afford it, to buy products that are inadequate and that they do not want. It perpetuates the very system that supposedly was the impetus in the first place for healthcare reform to pass."
-excerpted from Mr. Greenwald's appearance on Democracy Now, discussing the current state of health care reform.
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