Monday, September 23, 2013

Monday's Child

1.  Not as many happy returns.  For REI, that is.

2.  Poverty porn.  It's an industry, and a lot of rich people are getting richer from it.

3.  Imagine there's no logic.  I wonder if you can.  ACA wipes out wide variety of private insurance plans.  That would be okay, if we were going to single-payer.  But we are not.

4.  Okay, so maybe drones really ARE worthwhile, after all.  Drone buzzes the Queen Bee, in Germany.  Apparently it was a "Pirate Party" stunt, protesting drone observation of citizens.  Me gusta.

5.  Interesting piece by Brendan Nyhan on scandals, scandal coverage, and the effects on voters.



6.  7 politically incorrect health ideas...

7.  Interesting.  The welfare state is unsustainable.  So all you "sustainability" worriers have something new, and actually real, to worry about.  If they actually dismantle their welfare state, the US will soon be set to pass the Dutchies on the left hand side...

8.  Wow, even that cheezy shameless rent-seeking suck-up Warren Buffet is abandoning the Prez.  That has to hurt.

9.  Scary clown!  No, not Rick Santorum, this guy.  He just stares.

10.  Apparently, Oklahoma intends to secede...

11.  I have not seen Anonyman dance (and I am grateful for that, don't mistake me).  But I'm pretty sure this is what it would look like.

12.  Steps to better foot health.  (get it?  steps?)

13.  Teachers may in fact be underpaid.  But the American public substantially underestimates how much teachers are paid.

14.  I think they are compensating by writing the need other people have to compensate.  That's what I think.

15.  You don't have to be a denier to wonder whether a narrow focus on CO2 is worth it.

16.  I had thought this must be a parody.  But apparently it's real.  They actually think that there are poor people who own beachfront property.  And they further think that because insurance is "too expensive," the rest of us should subsidize people taking the very risks that make the insurance too expensive in the first place.  I wish it were a parody.   As JR notes, it starts out plausibly enough.  But then it goes badly off the tracks at the end.

17.  Seriously?  A "sandy handy"?

18.  I don't know what he's whinin' about.  In Provincetown you gotta extra for this.

19.  It's not porn...

20.  Surviving Whole Foods:  Not easy

21.  Ezra Klein hates things that use electricity, especially your fridge.

22.  Old school blackened dogs.  They gots NO ketchup, mayo, kraut, chips, fries or any of that crap.  And the menu says so.

23.  This seems wrong somehow.  But it is a little more complicated than it seems.  The "health care" is provided by their "job."  So maybe not that ironic after all?  Still, a tin ear...

23.  Should we change the grant adjudication process?

24.  Bizarrely, the article appears to want us to believe that the regulation of "ride-shares" is to benefit consumers.  But of course, it is designed to benefit large corporate interests, the way that all regulation is designed to benefit large corporate interests...

25.  Champ test:  I like the way the "manager" sounds like a NASCAR driver

26.  Really grump things can be cute. So now maybe Scott de Marchi will get an endorsement deal next?

27.  Addicts behave rationally.  So do scientists.  Of the two, addicts are more admirable.

28.  Putting over goose poo.

29.  WH on ACA and underwriting.

Some of our favorite headlines:

1.  British drivers can pay for parking with chestnuts.

2.  Man charged for DUI while "driving" lawn mower.






7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe that last guy is just a big George Jones fan doing an homage.

Tom said...

In your #7, politically incorrect health ideas, Maddock muses "how long before ...a computer that is run by a scary smart technician tells us what treatment we need?"

Technician? Really!? Who needs the technician? We already have webMD, wikipedia, and dozens of other ways to evaluate symptoms in the web. A $50 device turns your smart phone into an opthamalascope. With just your camera, you can get skin lesions evaluated for signs of melanoma. et cetera, et cetera.

The future is here.

Johnson85 said...

Did you link to the wrong article in No. 16?

Wasn't much about beach front property in there. As stupid as our flood insurance program has been, it doesn't help the debate to pretend that people receiving the subsidy own or live or do business on beachfront property. It's basically anyone close to rivers or the coast. The people that are going to lose their houses because of the changes in the NFIP are not the ones on the beach, it's the ones living inland that were stupid enough to build to a height the government told them to build to (or buy a house built at the height the gov't told them to build to).

John Covil said...

"“There seemed to be at least as many — if not more — cases in which illicit drugs played little or no role than were there situations in which their pharmacological effects seemed to matter,” writes Dr. Hart, now 46. Crack and meth may be especially troublesome in some poor neighborhoods and rural areas, but not because the drugs themselves are so potent."

And it's worse than that. Not only does prohibition cause massive problems because of increased criminality and civil liberties abuses and all that, the lack of an open market means the quality of drugs is unknown. Not just potency, but in composition. Illness and death from 'illicit' compounds in the drugs have to be a cost as well, right?

Have there been any attempts to quantify the amount of harm from drug use that arises from questionable formulation?

For reference, see this Atlantic piece on the interplay of MDMA and electronic dance music. Some attention is given to the danger of suspect MDMA. It's long, but well worth the read.

John Covil said...

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/electronic-dance-music-s-love-affair-with-mdma-a-history/279815/

It would help if I included the link.

Patrick R. Sullivan said...

Destroying all those little, catastrophic health care plans is by design. The necessary prelude to single-payer.

John Thacker said...

The people that are going to lose their houses because of the changes in the NFIP are not the ones on the beach, it's the ones living inland that were stupid enough to build to a height the government told them to build to (or buy a house built at the height the gov't told them to build to).

No, they didn't "build to a height the government told them to build to." The federal flood maps always showed the high-water level higher than where they built. What happened is that the governemnt subsidized their insurance and, as a result, people didn't build their house to the level shown on the government's flood maps, (or bought a pre-existing but too low house) but trusted that the subsidized insurance would save them.

The government never "told people to build" to a certain level. What it did was promise people a subsidy that it shouldn't have, enabling people to do something that they otherwise couldn't afford, and now that subsidy is going away. One can feel bad for the people who trusted in that subsidy in some sense, but the appropriateness of a buyout of their subsidy is a matter for discussion.