what we don't know is A LOT

Jon Stewart worries about Glenn Beck's organs

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:37:00 +0000

I know it's been nothing but videos lately, but this is so funny I cried. You have to have watched Glenn Beck recently (last year) to really appreciate it.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The 11/3 Project

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

I LOVE flashmobs!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:15:00 +0000

They have got to be some of the funniest, most awesome cultural phenomena of our time. I especially like the dancing ones (as opposed to the freezing ones).

Here are some of my favorites:

The "T-mobile dance" flash mob in Liverpool Street Station January 15th, 2009.

CocaCola Flash mob

Hammer Time!!

And "Do Re Mi" in Antwerp. Cute kids!

Jim Ward's "Skit"

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:04:00 +0000

Jim Ward, the Voice Deity from the Stephanie Miller show, a hilarious political comedy show I listen to every single day, made a little "skit" featuring some of his regular characters. Here it is.

You can visit Stephanie Miller's site here and Jim Ward's fan page here.

Keep Fucking that Chicken

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:51:00 +0000

This is a little old now but warms my heart.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Intro - Ernie Anastos' Catch Phrase

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Simon's Cat "Let me In"

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:13:00 +0000

My favorite part of all time at 1:20. So true!!!

Neurofeedback

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:04:00 +0000

I've been off antidepressants for two months now, and off my initial dose for 7 months. I have also been under some stress lately with stupid health issues (an endless cold, weird back pain, etc etc) and a visit from my (very lovely) grandpa. So maybe it is no wonder that I am starting to question if some of the original symptoms are coming back. I've had a great many more panic attacks recently than I can remember having in the previous year, and my response to the smallest stresses (grandpa's visit, sister's wedding, hanging artwork for a show) is to freak out. Even things as simple as having to make dinner or feeling really tired make me anxious. Husband says I don't seem any different, so hopefully this is a case of me making an elephant out of a mouse. Nevertheless, I have decided to try out the neurofeedback suggested to me by an acupuncturist.

I tried to understand this proceedure best I could. I watched the (extremely cheesy) video that the acupuncturist gave me. I also read the book "Symphony in the Brain" by Jim Robbins, a journal who writes on popular science issues, and who is a great fan of the treatment. The book was sensationalist and only mildly informative. It conveyed a sense of a budding scientific discovery gone to waste by the drama and discord among the practitioners.

Here is what I have gathered about this procedure. Our brain's activity produces electrical activity of different frequencies. These can be measured with an EEG and are grouped into types (delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma), each associated with a several normal (and abnormal) functions. For example, delta frequencies are measured during certain parts of our sleep, alpha when we are relaxed, beta when we anxious. These are generalities of course. So two things are the basis of neurofeedback:

1) Pathologies (depression, ADD, epilepsy, coma, etc) show a deviation of EEG activity from the norm.
2) Brains can be trained to alter their EEG activity.

Both of these statements are technically true. The leap that has not been tested too well in a scientific setting is that training your brain (such as with neurofeedback) can cure the pathology. There are certainly many clinical studies that show this to be the case (from neurofeedback professionals), but even these professionals don't seem to agree on the best protocols. Each practitioner seems to follow their own methodology, deciding which EEG activity to stimulate or suppress, and they don't all agree.

The woman I'll be seeing is following the methods of Siegfried and Susan Othmer (of EEG Info, previous owners of EEG Spectrum, now a completely separate neurofeedback group). I believe they work by messing around with alpha waves, but maybe that is too simplistic. I hope to get a better understand of what she'll be doing during my first appointment with her (on Monday) and by reading a textbook I have ordered that teaches neurofeedback to practitioners. Hopefully they won't mess up my brain too much!

SNL skit

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:31:00 +0000

Tee hee hee!

John Perry and the "Obama Problem"

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:32:00 +0000

Some douchebag former senior editor of Newsmax named John Perry wrote this darling column the other day (which has now been taken down due to it being INSANE). You can still view it here. In it he suggests that the military will surely want to stage a "bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation." "Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders," he goes on to say, "would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making." omg, wtf....

There has been a rash of this kind of talk lately. There was the facebook poll on whether the president ought to be assassinated. There is Glenn Beck in his schizophrenic entirety. There is the census worker who got killed for being a "Fed". The gun-carrying protesters outside townhalls. There is violence and so much hatred, it is frankly scary. I'll be the first to admit that I couldn't stand George Bush. I wanted him impeached, out of office. I wanted him held legally accountable for his behavior, which included illegal wiretapping of American citizens, lying and using known forged information to start a war in Iraq, and the torturing of detainees. These things, I suggest to you, are in fact unconstitutional. Giving everyone in this country health care is not.

In fact, the constitution, which I have read today in it's entirety, does mention several times the duty of the Congress and of the President to "promote the general welfare", "welfare" being defined as "health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being". That sounds like it includes healthcare to me!

It's not like there aren't legitimate issues to discuss when it comes to health care reform. How will we pay for it, is one good topic. How do we make sure that hospitals and doctors get compensated well (more then they do now from medicare, for example)? Why on earth aren't we figuring out a universal single payer system, is a favorite of mine. But "Obama is a Kenyan socialist, marxist, fascist who wants to kill grandma and is a Muslim" IS NEITHER LEGITIMATE NOR SANE!!!!! While I am on the subject can we just agree that "communist" and "Nazi" CANNOT be used interchangeably? Retards...

Quitting SSRIs safely and patiently

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:19:00 +0000

After taking citalopram (Celexa) for just over six years I have finally succeeded in quitting. I'd tried before, even managing to get down from 40mg to 20mg before I accidentally missed a single dose and spent a week going out of my mind. After bumping it up to 30mg I seemed to regain my sanity but a visit with the doctor left me saddened - she told me I would probably never be able to get off the meds.

This past winter I read the book, "Biology of Belief" by Bruce Lipton. It was interesting and inspiring, even if the science is dubious at best. It talked of mind over matter, our ability to heal ourselves, and it made me think of trying to quit the drugs again. Remembering my past experiences I did some research, and found out that one resource among others seemed to help a lot of people - a book by Joseph Glenmullen, "The Antidepressant Solution".

The message of the book boiled down to one thing: the doctors don't know the safe way of going off SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). I had been following my doctors advice of taking a full dose one day, then a half dose the next, then a full dose again. After a week I was supposed to switch to doing just the half dose. Repeat. What I did this time (for reason well illustrated in the book), was to lower my dose by the smallest fraction possible, which in my case was 5mg, and try to stay on that dose for at least a month. This gives your brain time to adjust and kick in it's own serotonin production. After a month I would lower the dose again by 5mg and so forth. I was also supplementing with an excellent B vitamin complex, which provides choline and lecithin, needed for acetocholine production (that is advice not from the book but this site.)

It took me 5 months, six if you count the number of withdrawal periods. It wasn't pleasant, but it was far less painful than my previous attempts. Among physical symptoms I had dizziness, which would usually come on three days after I lowered the dose, and last a few days. Psychologically, I had some pretty bizarre obsessive thoughts. I didn't recognize them as symptoms until I saw a pattern emerge. I still had the occasional panic or anxiety attack, but no more so then when I was on the drugs.

So now I have been drug free for two months. I am still on the look out for signs that I am slipping back into the anxiety state I was in pre-meds, but so far so good. I should mention that I do not regret the decision to start the medicine in the first place. It was at a time in my life when they were the help I needed to become a person again (perhaps more on that another day?) Still, it feels great to know that I am not a dependent, that if I accidentally miss taking that one little pill I will not have to spend the next few days suffering crazy withdrawal symptoms.

I shall now allow myself a "Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiippeeeeeeeeeeeee!" :)

First Time Acupuncture

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:56:00 +0000

Husband has seasonal allergies and doesn't like taking meds, so I thought he should try acupuncture. I got him an appointment and then he decided not to go. So I figured, what the heck, I'll go in his place.

This was my first time getting acupuncture. I wasn't sure what my "major complaint" was, but since I have been freaking out emotionally lately I decided to go with the panic and anxiety and my phobia. First the woman did a variation of the emotional freedom technique (their site), which I have already done in the past. It involves tapping on various points while thinking about what's bothering you. She added to that a kinesiology step to check which points were effective. I felt that the whole thing was rushed, I didn't have time to really focus on what was bothering me, so I am not sure how effective it could be. An interesting thing that came out of it though, was that she felt that I responded well to a 'kidney' point just below the clavicle. Apparently in Chinese medicine, fear is associated with the kidneys. So I told her that I'd had unusual kidney quirks since I was a kid, and that besides, I have three kidneys instead of two. Could there be a connection?

Next she had me lie down and she pushed on various parts of my large intestine, small intestine, bladder and each kidney. Some places hurt, other didn't. The ones that hurt, she would push again while simultaneously pressing on some points on my feet and elbows, and the weird thing is, the pain would go away immediately. That was probably the coolest.

Finally it was time for actual needles. She put some in my feet for the kidneys, one in my forehead for the spirit, and two in my right ear. She also put one in my hand but it hurt, and though I didn't mind the pain, she didn't want me to keep it in. The one in my forehead burned quite a bit, but that was about it. There was no pain when they went in, not even mosquito bite type of pain. I was then left to lie on the table for about 15 minutes, and that was it. Afterward I was seriously spaced out for about an hour. I wondered around downtown because I didn't feel it was safe to drive, and talked to my mother on the phone in strenuously strung together sentences.

In the evening I had a bad headache, and this morning I did not start my day with a panic attack, the first in a week. So that is good.

In the end, my acupuncturist said that for my problems I should really try neurofeedback (explanation here). It is expensive though, probably about $1500 total. I got a book about it, called "The Symphony in the Brain", which I'll check out. I'll keep you posted.

Laser Bread

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:15:00 +0000

This guy makes something new every day. Not all are nice, but here are some creative ones I liked.

Internal Dialog

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Returning to actual blog posts now (apologies for all the articles lately). I am thinking, once again, of going back to school and getting a PhD. My family insists that it is important to have a PhD, and if I am going to do it, now would be the time since I have no children and my brain is still young enough to retain some new information. Problem is, I have no idea what to study. Here is my line of thinking (or circle more like it, cause it never actually goes anywhere):

Should I go back to grad school? It's now or never really. Should I study art or science? Art is nice but I am not that talented, am emotionally unstable, and would miss science too much. Ok science it is. Should I study what I like to do and am good at, such as molecular biology or perhaps evolutionary bio? It will involve bench work, which I like, and I already have a degree and 5 years working experience to help me along. But it's not what I care about right now! What do you care about? I care about issues of sustainable agriculture, food quality (not quantity, mind you!) and maintaining health in the age of overcrowding, pollution and climate change! But you know nothing about any of this... It doesn't sound like it involves any bench work, and you will probably have to do a lot of 'communicating' and 'leadership' and you know how you tend to freak out about extroverted things! And besides, who is to say that you'll keep caring about this. There was a time when you cared about genetics. But bench work will get old soon too. Can I even handle grad school? It sounds stressful and I am prone to panic attacks. But you can't let fear stop you from doing what you want to do! But I don't know what I want to do! Do you want to go to grad school? It's probably now or never...

The problem is, if I don't do something it will all soon turn from "what could be" to "what could have been" and I'll be sitting in my little home whispering "my precioussss...."

Another decent article about health care reform myths

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:37:00 +0000

The Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate

By Sharon Begley | NEWSWEEK

Published Aug 29, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Sep 7, 2009

To the credit of opponents of health-care reform, the lies and exaggerations they're spreading are not made up out of whole cloth—which makes the misinformation that much more credible. Instead, because opponents demand that everyone within earshot (or e-mail range) look, say, "at page 425 of the House bill!," the lies take on a patina of credibility. Take the claim in one chain e-mail that the government will have electronic access to everyone's bank account, implying that the Feds will rob you blind. The 1,017-page bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee does call for electronic fund transfers—but from insurers to doctors and other providers. There is zero provision to include patients in any such system. Five other myths that won't die:

You'll have no choice in what health benefits you receive.
The myth that a "health choices commissioner" will decide what benefits you get seems to have originated in a July 19 post at blog.flecksoflife.com, whose homepage features an image of Obama looking like Heath Ledger's Joker. In fact, the House bill sets up a health-care exchange—essentially a list of private insurers and one government plan—where people who do not have health insurance through their employer or some other source (including small businesses) can shop for a plan, much as seniors shop for a drug plan under Medicare part D. The government will indeed require that participating plans not refuse people with preexisting conditions and offer at least minimum coverage, just as it does now with employer-provided insurance plans and part D. The requirements will be floors, not ceilings, however, in that the feds will have no say in how generous private insurance can be.

No chemo for older Medicare patients.
The threat that Medicare will give cancer patients over 70 only end-of-life counseling and not chemotherapy—as a nurse at a hospital told a roomful of chemo patients, including the uncle of a NEWSWEEK reporter—has zero basis in fact. It's just a vicious form of the rationing scare. The House bill does not use the word "ration." Nor does it call for cost-effectiveness research, much less implementation—the idea that "it isn't cost-effective to give a 90-year-old a hip replacement."

The general claim that care will be rationed under health-care reform is less a lie and more of a non-disprovable projection (as is Howard Dean's assertion that health-care reform will not lead to rationing, ever). What we can say is that there is de facto rationing under the current system, by both Medicare and private insurance. No plan covers everything, but coverage decisions "are now made in opaque ways by insurance companies," says Dr. Donald Berwick of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

A related myth is that health-care reform will be financed through $500 billion in Medicare cuts. This refers to proposed decreases in Medicare increases. That is, spending is on track to reach $803 billion in 2019 from today's $422 billion, and that would be dialed back. Even the $560 billion in reductions (which would be spread over 10 years and come from reducing payments to private Medicare advantage plans, reducing annual increases in payments to hospitals and other providers, and improving care so seniors are not readmitted to a hospital) is misleading: the House bill also gives Medicare $340 billion more over a decade. The money would pay docs more for office visits, eliminate copays and deductibles for preventive care, and help close the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare drug benefit, explains Medicare expert Tricia Neuman of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Illegal immigrants will get free health insurance.
The House bill doesn't give anyone free health care (though under a 1986 law illegals who can't pay do get free emergency care now, courtesy of all us premium paying customers or of hospitals that have to eat the cost). Will they be eligible for subsidies to buy health insurance? The House bill says that "individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States" will not be allowed to receive subsidies.

The claim that taxpayers will wind up subsidizing health insurance for illegal immigrants has its origins in the defeat of an amendment, offered in July by Republican Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada, to require those enrolling in a public plan or seeking subsidies to purchase private insurance to have their citizenship verified. Flecksoflife.com claimed on July 19 that "HC [health care] will be provided 2 all non US citizens, illegal or otherwise." Rep. Steve King of Iowa spread the claim in a USA Today op-ed on Aug. 20, calling the explicit prohibition on such coverage "functionally meaningless" absent mandatory citizenship checks, and it's now gone viral. Can we say that none of the estimated 11.9 million illegal immigrants will ever wangle insurance subsidies through identity fraud, pretending to be a citizen? You can't prove a negative, but experts say that Medicare—the closest thing to the proposals in the House bill—has no such problem.

Death panels will decide who lives.
On July 16 Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York and darling of the right, said on Fred Thompson's radio show that "on page 425," "Congress would make it mandatory…that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition." Sarah Palin coined "death panels" in an Aug. 7 Facebook post.

This lie springs from a provision in the House bill to have Medicare cover optional counseling on end-of-life care for any senior who requests it. This means that any patient, terminally ill or not, can request a special consultation with his or her physician about ventilators, feeding tubes, and other measures. Thus the House bill expands Medicare coverage, but without forcing anyone into end-of-life counseling.

The death-panels claim nevertheless got a new lease on life when Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives under George W. Bush, claimed in an Aug. 18 Wall Street Journal op-ed that a 1997 workbook from the Department of Veterans Affairs pushes vets to "hurry up and die." In fact, the thrust of the 51-page book, which the VA pulled from circulation in 2007, is letting "loved ones" and "health care providers" "know your wishes." Readers are asked to decide what they believe, including that "life is sacred and has meaning, no matter what its quality," and that "my life should be prolonged as long as it can...using any means possible." But the workbook also asks if readers "believe there are some situations in which I would not want treatments to keep me alive." Opponents of health-care reform have selectively cited this passage as evidence the government wants to kill the old and the sick.

The government will set doctors' wages.
This, too, seems to have originated on the Flecksoflife blog on July 19. But while page 127 of the House bill says that physicians who choose to accept patients in the public insurance plan would receive 5 percent more than Medicare pays for a given service, doctors can refuse to accept such patients, and, even if they participate in a public plan, they are not salaried employees of it any more than your doctor today is an employee of, say, Aetna. "Nobody is saying we want the doctors working for the government; that's completely false," says Amitabh Chandra, professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

To be sure, there are also honest and principled objections to health-care reform. Some oppose a requirement that everyone have health insurance as an erosion of individual liberty. That's a debatable position, but an honest one. And many are simply scared out of their wits about what health-care reform will mean for them. But when fear and loathing hijack the brain, anything becomes believable—even that health-care reform is unconstitutional. To disprove that, check the commerce clause: Article I, Section 8.

With Katie Connolly, Claudia Kalb, and Ian Yarett

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/214254

Myths about Healthcare

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Oh my. I have been working on this annoyingly long post about healthcare reform myths and then I came across this article which is so good and says everything I wanted to say. So there is really no point in my post anymore. So here is the article in its entirety. You can also find it here.

5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

By T.R. Reid
Sunday, August 23, 2009

As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.

I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems. To do that, we first have to dispel a few myths about health care abroad:

1. It's all socialized medicine out there.

Not so. Some countries, such as Britain, New Zealand and Cuba, do provide health care in government hospitals, with the government paying the bills. Others -- for instance, Canada and Taiwan -- rely on private-sector providers, paid for by government-run insurance. But many wealthy countries -- including Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland -- provide universal coverage using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans.

In some ways, health care is less "socialized" overseas than in the United States. Almost all Americans sign up for government insurance (Medicare) at age 65. In Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, seniors stick with private insurance plans for life. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is one of the planet's purest examples of government-run health care.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation's 200 private health insurance plans -- a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn't like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.

In France and Japan, you don't get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as "in-network" lists of doctors or "pre-authorization" for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment -- and insurance has to pay.

Canadians have their choice of providers. In Austria and Germany, if a doctor diagnoses a person as "stressed," medical insurance pays for weekends at a health spa.

As for those notorious waiting lists, some countries are indeed plagued by them. Canada makes patients wait weeks or months for nonemergency care, as a way to keep costs down. But studies by the Commonwealth Fund and others report that many nations -- Germany, Britain, Austria -- outperform the United States on measures such as waiting times for appointments and for elective surgeries.

In Japan, waiting times are so short that most patients don't bother to make an appointment. One Thursday morning in Tokyo, I called the prestigious orthopedic clinic at Keio University Hospital to schedule a consultation about my aching shoulder. "Why don't you just drop by?" the receptionist said. That same afternoon, I was in the surgeon's office. Dr. Nakamichi recommended an operation. "When could we do it?" I asked. The doctor checked his computer and said, "Tomorrow would be pretty difficult. Perhaps some day next week?"

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise -- private-sector, for-profit health insurance -- is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.

U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for nonmedical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.

The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who's had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.

Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a "preexisting condition" -- precisely the people most likely to need the insurers' service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims. If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer's "rescission department" digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy, often while the victim is still in the hospital. The companies say they have to do this stuff to survive in a tough business.

Foreign health insurance companies, in contrast, must accept all applicants, and they can't cancel as long as you pay your premiums. The plans are required to pay any claim submitted by a doctor or hospital (or health spa), usually within tight time limits. The big Swiss insurer Groupe Mutuel promises to pay all claims within five days. "Our customers love it," the group's chief executive told me. The corollary is that everyone is mandated to buy insurance, to give the plans an adequate pool of rate-payers.

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.

This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

Given our remarkable medical assets -- the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research -- the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.

T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter, is the author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care," to be published Monday.

Simon's Cat strikes again!

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:10:00 +0000

Arguing with a Dining Room Table - Go Barney Frank!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:09:00 +0000

or go here to see it, or here.

Literal Videos

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:25:00 +0000

OMG! LOL!
This has probably been around for a while but let's face it, I'm slow. These guys took some famous videos from the 80s and changed the song lyrics so that they describe what is actually happening in the video. Cracks me up big time. Here are two, and there a few more on their website, http://www.dustfilms.com/literalvideos

My Political Spectrum Quiz results

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:32:00 +0000

Like any of you had any doubts...

My Political Views
I am a left moderate social libertarian
Left: 6.55, Libertarian: 2.99

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -6.33

My Culture War Stance
Score: -8.76

Let's Compare Your Results to the Average

Average of All Quiz-Takers:

You can take the quiz here: Political Spectrum Quiz

My take on healthcare

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:17:00 +0000

I have been quiet on the subject, not because I don't care, but because frankly I care too much. Healthcare reform is something that I have very strong feelings about. I was pleasantly surprised when it suddenly became such a big deal. Supporters say Obama ran on a healthcare platform. That is of course not true. Obama ran on an anti-war, anti-Bush platform, and it was Hilary who had a stronger stance on healthcare. Nevertheless, healthcare suddenly exploded onto the national stage, and I was tickled pink. So why have I been keeping mum? Because I don't believe that the US is able to pass something as humanistic as universal healthcare and I didn't want to get my hopes up. I have not been disappointed in my pessimism, as single payer was taken off the table, now public option is going the way of the dinosaur, and the fight against healthcare reform has turned so dirty it would be funny (if it weren't so sad).

So here is where I stand. I think every country that is able, and that definitely includes the US, should make sure that every single on of the people in it, regardless of financial, legal, and even citizenship status, should have full and complete and good health care. Period. Are you a bum living on the street? Are you an illegal alien? Are you Donald Trump? Are you feeling off color? Go to the doctor and be made better. It's that simple. No exceptions. Not to mention that the care should be so fucking awesome that even Donald Trump will have nothing to complain about.

Who pays for it? Everyone who can. As with any tax I think the rich should pay a bit more, and the poor less. Those who can't pay anything, don't. So will my tax dollars go to pay for someone who has never worked an honest day in their life? Yes! And I am bloody fine with it, and I don't understand those who aren't. (As an aside, a huge number of Americans claim to be Christians, but are in my opinion greedy selfish bastards when it comes to taking care of their neighbor).

To those misinformation bastards out there who say that we don't have enough money to make this work, consider that we already spend out of our own pocket (or our employers pocket which really means less wages for us) more on healthcare than other countries, and we are so shitty even Colombia and Singapore (and 34 other countries) are better that us. You are telling me this country that is supposedly so great can't make something so basic happen?

And what irks me even more is how many people DON'T want universal healthcare. I have my doubts about their understanding of the subject. All these seniors who are being riled up, told that their Medicare will suffer (duh you stupid old buggers, Medicare is universal healthcare for you lot!!!). Don't you understand that you are being used by the sneaky powers behind healthcare companies and conservative think tanks? Probably not... (incidentally did you know that the average Fox viewer is over 65, white and doesn't have a college degree? - for more interesting demographic knowledge stuff check this out). Now the same nitwits who brought you teabagging are bussing in "concerned constituents" (who are probably birthers to boot) to disrupt town hall meetings.

As you can see, my feelings run high on this subject matter, and I have probably offended a bunch of you by questioning your intelligence, but so be it. It was all for naught anyway, because as I said before, the US won't have universal healthcare for a long time still. Whatever it is that will be passed this year will be something lame and watered down, and I am not even holding my breath. I probably wouldn't be so buggered if they didn't keep calling themselves "the greatest country in the world". As fucking if.

Shatner reading Palin

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:22:00 +0000

tee hee hee

Here is William Shatner, reading word for word Palin's farewell speech. I have to say, it is kind of beautiful that way. Enjoy!

the Matt Taibi rticle you have probably heard about

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:34:00 +0000

..can be found here or here. If you haven't heard about it, you should have. And you should definitely read it. I nearly failed economics in high school, and almost nothing about the market makes any sense to me, but this is important. In very brief and inadequate summary, Goldman Sachs has been intimately involved in:

1) The Great Stock Market Crash by setting up "investments trusts". "The first effort was the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation; the bank issued a million shares at $100 apiece, bought all those shares with its own money and then sold 90 percent of them to the hungry public at $104. The trading corporation then relentlessly bought shares in itself, bidding the price up further and further. Eventually it dumped part of its holdings and sponsored a new trust, the Shenandoah Corporation, issuing millions more in shares in that fund — which in turn sponsored yet another trust called the Blue Ridge Corporation."

2) Creating the Internet Bubble by laddering. "Say you're Goldman Sachs, and Bullshit.com comes to you and asks you to take their company public. You agree on the usual terms: You'll price the stock, determine how many shares should be released and take the Bullshit.com CEO on a "road show" to schmooze investors, all in exchange for a substantial fee (typically six to seven percent of the amount raised). You then promise your best clients the right to buy big chunks of the IPO at the low offering price — let's say Bullshit.com's starting share price is $15 — in exchange for a promise that they will buy more shares later on the open market. That seemingly simple demand gives you inside knowledge of the IPO's future, knowledge that wasn't disclosed to the daytrader schmucks who only had the prospectus to go by: You know that certain of your clients who bought X amount of shares at $15 are also going to buy Y more shares at $20 or $25, virtually guaranteeing that the price is going to go to $25 and beyond."

3) Creating the Housing Bubble: "Goldman used two methods to hide the mess they were selling. First, they bundled hundreds of different mortgages into instruments called Collateralized Debt Obligations. Then they sold investors on the idea that, because a bunch of those mortgages would turn out to be OK." But there were regulations to protect against such things so "In 2000, on its last day in session, Congress passed the now-notorious Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which had been inserted into an 11,000-page spending bill at the last minute, with almost no debate on the floor of the Senate. Banks were now free to trade default swaps with impunity."

4) The $4 per gallon gas last year was not supply/demand, but speculation. "Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures — agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date." And why were they allowed to do this? The Commodity Futures Trading Commission "issued the bank a free pass, called the "Bona Fide Hedging" exemption, allowing Goldman's subsidiary to call itself a physical hedger and escape virtually all limits placed on speculators. In the years that followed, the commission would quietly issue 14 similar exemptions to other companies."

5) The Bail Out - Goldman gets money from tax payers (13 billion through AIG alone) and "pays back it's debt", a mere 14 million dollars, to the American people. Why so little? "According to Goldman's annual report, the low taxes are due in large part to changes in the bank's "geographic earnings mix." In other words, the bank moved its money around so that most of its earnings took place in foreign countries with low tax rates."

6) Future bubble yet to come - cap and trade, making money off carbon credits.

Obviously this does not read like much in my post, it's just a copy paste of the article, and you should really just go read the thing for yourself. I really hope you do...

Crazy Birther Lady

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:30:00 +0000

she and her lot have some serious issues....

Is it OK to paint from photographs?

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Conundrum. Please advise. Is it ok? Or is it lame? I know that plenty of really shitty work comes from painting from photos (example here and here and here), but what if it turns out ok, like I think this one did? Do others do it? How can you tell? If not, how on Earth do they manage?

Stumbled upon a beautiful artist today (thanks to Life Spatula and Sadie Jernigan Valeri). Megan Roodenrys from Australia does primarily portraits. This one in particular, entitled "Theresa" caught my eye. I can't stop looking at it. But, did she just paint from the model? Or did she take photos? What do you think???

Update: a spirited discussion happens at the bottom of this page in the comments section. Note "photograph plagiarizing hobbyists" comments and others.

Harry Potter is So Lame

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:22:00 +0000

I mean in the movies, of course! I am a huge, ridiculously so, fan of the Harry Potter novels. It's fair to say that I've read each book at least ten times. And last night I went to see the latest movie, "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince". I think I am with most fans in that I liked the more faithful approach of the first two films (directed by Chris Columbus, screen play by Steve Kloves), I was befuddled by the darkness of the third film (directed by Alfonso Cuaron) and hated (and still do) the ridiculous portrayal of Dumbledore by Michael Gambon, who was brash, unpleasant, and spoke primarily in cheesy fortune cookie one-liners. I made my piece with the darker directing in "The Goblet of Fire" because let's face it, the books were getting darker too. Gambon was in rare form when he began snapping at students and even lunged at Harry at one point, shaking him violently while asking him a simple question. The fifth one and now this latest installment have been directed by a David Yates. I don't even remember much from "The Order of the Phoenix", though I am sure it bugged me in some way or another. But while the latest film is so fresh in my mind I shall make some points about it, all SPOILERS, so if you haven't read the books (and why on Earth not???) or haven't see the film yet, I would suggest you don't read ahead.

First and foremost Daniel Radcliff is a remarkably shitty actor. Sure he isn't very attractive, but that shouldn't be held against a person. He is just plane dull. Think Keanu Reeves and that cow in the headlights out to lunch blank stare. This brings me nicely to the part of the movie that irked me the most - the Harry-Ginny relationship, or rather lack thereof. Harry is supposedly pining for Ginny, and though I knew he was supposed to be (having read the book), I saw no hint of it in the movie until Hermione asks Harry how it feels to be wanting Ginny and not being able to have her. And then (!!!) Ginny kneels down and ties Harry's shoelaces. What!?! Who thought that was a good idea, unless it's supposed to be some kind of "while you are down there" reference. The two do finally share a little peck of a kiss in the Room of Requirements, initiated by Ginny, Harry standing there entirely unresponsive.

On the plot side, they entirely skipped over the speculation about Horcruxes being objects of importance to Riddle, without which I have no idea how Harry and the rest will figure out what objects to search for (the cup, the diadem, etc).

Minor pet peeves also include Harry not being bound by a spell while Dumbledore gets killed, but hiding out of sight (way out of character), and the random attack on and destruction of the Burrow.

Still, weirdly, I thought the movie was overall ok. They managed to cram most of the book in (unlike "Order of the Phoenix", which if I recall correctly was butchered mercilessly). And Ron and Hermione were brilliant, in all respects, including their more developed romance.

P.S. This was such a cute picture of the two of them I had to include it, even though it seems to be from the fourth movie, and I don't recall that scene at all. Perhaps it's photoshopped? Any ideas?

Update: The picture above was created by this person using a scene from "The Prince and Me". Good job!

Incidentally, why are there suddenly over a 1000 views on this post? Is it linked somewhere?

Awesome artist profile - Chris Jordan

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:47:00 +0000

I decided to start a new recurring series on this blog, profiling cool artists I stumble across. Today's awesome artist is Chris Jordan. His series "Running with Numbers I and II" bring statistics into perspective. For instance, did you know that two million plastic bottles are used the United States every five minutes? It is an astronomical number, impossible to fathom. And here they are:

Partial zoom:

And fully zoomed in, what you would see if you were looking at it in person (yes, this pictures is this huge, 60x120") :

Here is another one called "Prison Uniforms". It's measures 10 x 23 feet and depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of American incarcerated in 2005.

Full zoom:

"Cans Seurat", 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

Full zoom:

His 2009 work, "Gyre", is an 8x11 foot print that shows 2.4 million pieces of plastic, equal to the estimated number of pounds of plastic pollution that enter the world's oceans every hour.

I encourage you to go to his website, http://www.chrisjordan.com and check out more of Jordan's work. Technically impressive, it is both awe inspiring and completely terrifying. I dare you to look at his plastic bag piece and not switch to reusable bags immediately (if you haven't already. And if you haven't, why on earth not????)