4013 Slow days

Saturday, February  21, 2015

People who are stupid, unskilled, or incompetent are frequently too stupid, unskilled, or incompetent to realize how stupid, unskilled, or incompetent they really are. That's basically known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Did you know that cats reserve open-mouth meows for when addressing humans?  They never meow to each other, or to anything else, or for any other reason.  Just to humans.   It's like they invented a whole language especially for talking to us!  And every cat speaks it.

I've had cats pretty much all my life, and I'd never noticed that, but now, yeah, come to think of it, it seems true.  I wonder how they learn that.  Mother cats talk to their kittens in a closed-mouth sort of "mmmmrrrrrrrr", which is sort of almost but not quite a meow.  Perhaps cats consider humans equivalent to hearing-impaired  kittens.

Thoughts?

-----------------------

I'm writing this on my little tablet, because a few days ago the Wifi finder and hooker upper thingy on my laptop stopped finding and hooking up, and finally it simply declared it no longer existed.  As far as I'm concerned, no Internet = brick.   Monday I'll take it in for service.

In the meantime, the tablet (or whatever Sony calls it).  Onscreen keyboard.  switching back and forth for numbers letters punctuation.  Bleck.  I had bought a wonderful little Bluetooth keyboard for it that worked beautifully, but I can't seem to get it to charge this time, so that also will get a checkup on Monday.

Sigh.  And it's snowing.  Again.

I've had a cold that seems to swap back and forth from nose/throat to sinuses to throat only and through the cycle again.  Bad cough for two days, then slight cough with severe body aches for two days, then all fine except for hot throat for two days, then start the cycle again.  No fever at all so far, but today I've got a new one --- my voice is completely gone.  I have nothing above a whisper.

Mmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrr.
.

3557 Get off my lawn! #1

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Maybe we should just give the presidency to

whomever can raise the most money

and just be done with it.

-- Shoebox.com --

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Well, we've had our second "boil water" advisory in two weeks.  Welcome to NJ.  Three mains collapsed, and it will take weeks to repair them, so no outdoor water (gardens, lawns, car washing) until then.  I'm beginning to miss the extremely hard, silty, smelly and bad tasting well water at the country house.  It was at least dependable, always there. And relatively free.

--------------------------------

The usual people are screaming about the Supreme Court approving the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (PPACA).  The government site for information on the law is at http://www.healthcare.gov/law/index.html.  There's an excellent brief and clear synopsis at http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vb8vs/eli5_what_exactly_is_obamacare_and_what_did_it/c530lfx, which I highly recommend.

Somebody did a poll where they asked people if they approved of it or not.  If the respondent said no, the pollsters then asked if they approved of each of the individual parts, and they found that almost all of them liked almost all of the pieces of the law.   That doesn't make any sense.

Conservatives want to gut the mandate part.  Oddly, they want to keep the "no refusal for pre-existing conditions" part.  Do they really not understand that you can't have one without the other?  Otherwise, people simply won't get insurance at all until they get some catastrophic condition, THEN they'll buy insurance.  That won't work, fellas.  Premiums for all of us would be astronomical. 

Buncha idiots!

The governor of LA says LA will "defy the federal government" and refuse to implement the law.  Apparently he's unaware that any state can do anything they want as long as they achieve the goals of the law, which is lower costs and full coverage.

What leaves me spinning is that conservative types like to think of themselves as having family-oriented and Christian values, while they think liberals are immoral family-destroying godless atheists.  Or something.  But, uh, isn't taking care of your neighbors a Christian value?  And who is more likely to do that?

Contrary to what the talking heads tell us, Canadians and Brits seem quite happy with their health care systems.  When did "socialize" become a dirty word?  Why is "profit" such a wonderful word?  As Dr. Phil would ask, "How's that workin' for ya?"

---------------------------------

I went to the country house mid-week, so there was a lot of listening to the car radio.  Some woman is all ticked off about the rash of female stars appearing in magazines without makeup.  She points out that they all have perfect lighting, perfect hair, perfect tans, and "some work done".  Now here's the part that had me screaming.  She says that all women need makeup to look good, and to pretend otherwise is trashing womanhood.

She's NUTS!

If anything, SAYING that all women need makeup to look good is trashing womanhood!

(Yeah.  I'm yelling.)

----------------------------------

If you're trying to lose weight, substituting "pure natural" cane sugar or honey for high fructose corn syrup isn't going to help.  It's all sugar!  Sugar sugar sugar!  Empty calories.
a) "pure" or "natural" is irrelevant when it comes to gaining or losing weight.
b) a calorie is a calorie.
c) sugar cane and corn cane are related.  Corn syrup is used in processed foods because it's cheaper, that's all.
d) if you don't know how many calories were in what you just ate or drank, it's cheating to consider it zero.

---------------------------------

What's with all the catheters?  Every public bathroom I've used in the past two years has had used urinary catherers in the sanitary bins in the stalls, or worse, on the floor, and especially restrooms in nightclubs frequented by younger women.  Is there some kind of silent epidemic going on?  I don't understand?  Why do so many young women use them?  I just don't get it.

----------------------------------

An Albany area TV station has an ASL (sign language) interpreter in a small box on the lower right of the screen for all newscasts.  Which is a nice idea.  But!  They also always broadcast a station identifier overlay. On the lower right corner of the screen.  Over the interpreter.  You can see that the interpreter is there, but you can't see her hands.

Has no one from the station ever noticed?  Or don't they care?
.

3527 Expect the unexpected

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

-- Indira Gandhi --

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday, Daughter and I took the Nugget  for a walk.  Nugget likes to walk until she gets tired.  She walked to the end of our street and down a steep maintenance road toward the bay.  She saw a rough trail into the woods, so she and Daughter took off down that while I trundled the umbrella stroller on down the maintenance road.  After they came back out onto the road, we cut down a steep rock and sand bank to the seawall, where there's a new smooth cement sidewalk above the edge of the water.

After all that rough walking with no difficulty Nugget took about three steps on the smooth walkway and suddenly pitched forward, landing on her palms and chin.  LOTS of blood, all down the front of her shirt.  Only a little crying, though.  Daughter scooped her up and ran for home.  Washing, ice packs.

The damage, as of today:
You can see the two teeth up top that did the damage to her swollen lower lip.  Her chin looks terrible.  Daughter was worried that bone might have been chipped, but there's no bruising, so I think we escaped with just abrasion.

It doesn't seem to bother Nugget, though.  She still eats crackers happily.

--------------------------------

We also heard yesterday that a neighbor's cat had brought home a dead bat.  The neighbor's first impulse was to toss it down into the ravine, but then she called animal control just in case, and it was tested, and yeah, it had rabies.

The animal control people didn't say anything else.

Her cat had been vaccinated, but her children had touched the bat and played with the cat.  Anybody know what the danger might be, if any?

----------------------------------

These two issues - the rabid bat and the sudden oops on the walk - helped Daughter to make a decision.  Hercules is changing jobs, and the three of them will be without health insurance for somewhere between one and two months.  Because he's leaving voluntarily, they aren't eligible for COBRA.

Daughter checked into short-term insurance, and the same plan that's $700/month in Pennsylvania is $2000/month in New Jersey.  Ouch.  She can get into a group plan through her professional association for  a lot less, but it's still expensive for one or two lousy months.

Hercules hates insurance companies, and wants to do without until his employer's plan kicks in.

Daughter has asked her friends through Facebook what kind of medical expenses they could expect at Nugget's age, and everyone's all "Ho Hum","occasional colds",  advice like "don't go to a doctor, go to the urgent care center, it's cheaper", and so on.

They've been going 'round and 'round about it.  Me?  I'm freaking out.  I told Daughter that you don't get insurance for expected things.  You get it for the unexpected.  Insurance is a bet you make with the insurance company, a bet you hope to lose and they hope to win.  I advised her to get a catastrophic policy, something with a high out-of-pocket, like $10,000, and then full coverage after that.  "You realize that if something unexpected happens, you could lose your house."  (I didn't tell her, but I was remembering Jay.  Until his first seizure, he was very healthy.  In fact, he had just got off the treadmill when it hit.  After the seizure, it was $400,000 or more a year.  We were very lucky to have an excellent policy.  You never know what could happen.)

Well, until yesterday, Daughter couldn't imagine a catastrophe.  She couldn't even imagine "unexpected". 

Now she can.
.

3471 Dominion

Saturday, February 25, 2012

A ditch can't be filled with dirt from its sides.
-- Jewish Proverb --

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Regarding the horrible new Blogger word verification on comments, !those messes you can't read!, here's the relevant discussion from the Blogger help forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=540e2fdfc8c15474&hl=en

It amazes me that some folks claim to have taken WV off and subsequently saw very few spam comments, so they figure it isn't needed anyway. I took it off for two days recently and was immediately inundated with spam. I had to turn it back on.

The only other option is to moderate comments, but I HATE HATE HATE when people do that because you don't get to read the comments of others before commenting yourself, and you don't see your own comment for an indeterminate period of time. I had a period of a few weeks when my comments weren't showing up, and I assumed that for some reason the moderating blogger(s) were deciding not to allow my comments through, so it took me a while to discover I had a problem with Google login and the comments weren't being accepted at all on moderated blogs.

If you are having difficulty figuring out the WVs for comments, there are some symbols next to the entry blank, one of which, the left-most one I think, resolves to "cycle through, give me another". You can keep clicking that until one crops up that you can actually figure out. You won't have to retype your whole comment, or take a wild guess that's rejected.

--------------------------------

The world uses 89 BILLION barrels of crude oil PER DAY. It's pulled out of the earth and burned. Every day. We know of the effect on the atmosphere, but what about earthquakes? I mean, we're removing a lot of lubricant. Has anyone with any knowledge expressed an opinion?

--------------------------------

Here's an article about a child in St. Louis, and what can happen when employers can pick and choose what to cover in health policies: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill-mcclellan/article_35b5796c-7cc2-52e3-88c6-cc0050751f1d.html

--------------------------------

When I read this article - http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/21/georgia-democrats-to-propose-limitations-on-vasectomies-for-men/?iref=obnetwork - I thought it was a joke. You know, one of those "news" sites that spoof real news. But it's real!

Rep. Yasmin Neal, a Democrat from the Atlanta suburb of Jonesboro, planned on Wednesday to introduce HB 1116, which would prevent men from vasectomies unless needed to avert serious injury or death.

The bill reads: "It is patently unfair that men avoid the rewards of unwanted fatherhood by presuming that their judgment over such matters is more valid than the judgment of the General Assembly. ... It is the purpose of the General Assembly to assert an invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men in this state and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men."

“If we legislate women’s bodies, it’s only fair that we legislate men’s,” said Neal, who said she wanted to write bill that would generate emotion and conversation the way anti-abortion bills do. “There are too many problems in the state. Why are you under the skirts of women? I’m sure there are other places to be."

Personally, Neal said, she has no qualms with vasectomies.

“But even if it were proposed as a serious issue,” she said, “it’s still not my place as a woman to tell a man what to do with his body."

...

Earlier this month, Democratic Oklahoma Sen. Constance Johnson added then withdrew a provision to an anti-abortion bill that read "any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman's vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child." [Silk - Italics are mine. Um, doesn't the Old Testament say that, too? Onan's sin?]

In January, as the Virginia state Senate debated a bill that required women to have an ultrasound before an abortion, Democrat Janet Howell attached an amendment that required men to have rectal exams and cardiac stress tests before they could receive prescriptions for erectile dysfunction medication like Viagra. The amendment was rejected in the Senate, 21-19.

You go, girls! But do you think men are smart enough to understand what you're trying to tell them?

Perhaps women need to simply say to male legislators, you vote the way you have to, Dear, but understand that since I don't want a[nother] baby, and I seem to have no final say over that, there will simply be no more sex, of any kind. And, uh, remember you'll be up for reelection, so, uh, you'd better not get it anywhere else, either.

Sometimes I think that the next action will be to take away our shoes.
.

3418 The running man

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Nerds make the best lovers. They are intelligent, honest, faithful,
teachable, and best of all, grateful.
-- Silk --

---------------------------------------------------------------

In 1982, Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman published The Running Man. The book had been on my shelf for at least 20 years, unread. I think I avoided it because The Long Walk came out at about the same time, and that was a slog. Well, actually, a long walk.

I read The Running Man this past week just to get rid of it. Get it off the list.

It's about a guy who signs up for a reality show, wherein he is turned loose in a city with hunters after him. If he can last 30 days, he wins a fortune. He gets a certain amount of money for every day he can stay alive. He hopes to live long enough that his wife and sick child can benefit. Most of the population is desperately poor, and since rewards are offered to anyone who reports his whereabouts, he is safe from no one.

It was actually pretty good. Well, except that King is definitely not a science fiction writer, not a technological visionary, and so some parts are unintentionally funny. The story takes place in 2025, and the hero is given a video camera with the stipulation that he has to mail two tape cartridges a day to the reality show producer to prove he's still alive. And he does research in books in a library room. And stays in a room in a YMCA. And he uses pay phones! And apparently there's nothing like GPS.

One thing that struck me. There's a small group of "haves", and a very large group of "have-nots". The "haves" feel no compassion or responsibility for the rest of the population. They're just there to be used as cattle, grist for the mills. Factory working conditions are dangerous, but who cares? The deserving people got. Anyone who don't got, is obviously not deserving.

(Believe it or not, I know several people who think that way, that there are those who deserve, and those who don't. And every damn one of them is politically conservative.)

Anyway, back to the book. Our hero discovers that the air pollution is killing people, including his little daughter. The government is hiding that fact, calling it "asthma". They sell filters that fit in your nostrils (for like $6/$7 each), but it turns out that the cheap filters the general populace gets simply don't work. They're fakes. The real ones are terribly expensive, so only the "deserving" people can afford them. So everyone who can't afford real filters is dying.

King didn't come right out and say it, but I got the distinct impression that the fact that poor people were dying because they couldn't afford the real filters was just fine with the people in power, hunky dory. In fact, that's the plan. When they are all dead, crime statistics will drop, slums will be empty and can be bulldozed, overcrowding will be eased, life for the deserving people will be easier, and that can't be anything but good, right? It's survival of the fittest, right?

Ok. Application to today. Substitute health care for filters. People who can't afford health insurance don't go to the doctor until it's too late, so they die from treatable diseases.

Think about how certain parts of our population want to protect the haves, and it's that same portion of the population who want to kill universal health care.

Ya gotta wonder why.

Maybe King is a better visionary than I thought.
.

3390 More stuff I don't understand

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

You can fool some of the people all of the time, you can even fool all of the people some of the time, but you can always fool all of the fools all of the time.
-- Jeff MacNelly, "Shoe" --

------------------------------------------------------------------

I guess I don't understand what the problem is with the health act's requiring people to have health insurance. Not sure how it can be "unconstitutional". If the Supreme Court decides it's unconstitutional, then please explain to me how the states have the authority to require that I register my vehicles, and that I must have automobile insurance to drive them.

Yeah, it's a good thing, but so is health insurance. Being a good thing is not necessarily enough to make it constitutional. How can requiring health insurance be less constitutional than requiring contribution to social security? Or selective service ("the draft")? Or a load of other stuff?

I don't understand.

---------------------------------

Daughter, Nugget, and I went for a walk yesterday and we passed several houses down by the water that had signs in the window stating that the premises had been winterized, and listing the dangers posed by antifreeze in the water pipes. Summer homes, I guess. Daughter says the signs are legally required, and must be visible from the street.

Huh? The township is worried that trespassers, thieves, and vandals might be poisoned?

I don't get it.

Nothin' like advertising to casual passersby that the house is empty and unlikely to be checked on before spring. "Break in here! Have a party! Redecorate the walls! Compliments of the township!"
.

2751 Perspectives

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
-- Indira Gandhi --

---------------------------

-------------------------

In my humble opinion, people who are against any kind of health care reform fall into at least one of the following groups:

1. don't understand what the problem is,
2. don't understand what the possible solutions are,
3. profit under the current system,
4. are heardhearted SOBs who figure I've got mine and anybody who didn't manage their lives as well as I did can't have any of mine 'cause I ain't giving anything away, (and yes, they exist, I know personally three people who have expressed that opinion).

The current proposal is a piece of crap that attempts to appease all four groups. I am annoyed because there has been no attempt to educate people. Sob stories is not educational. If anything, sob stories just harden number fours.

----------------------------

I watch "Antiques Roadshow". When someone has something special, appraised at some large number, like a 150-year-old quilt at $25,000, my first thought is "Wow, that's a lot!" Then my second thought is "That's less than one year at an ivy-league college."

Folks are running all kinds of benefits for Haiti now. I heard that some local concert had raised $300,000 dollars, and I thought "Gee, that's a lot!" It had to come from people who have it to give, right?

I wondered, if Haiti hadn't happened, why couldn't charity concerts like that be used to help people who have lost jobs, who are losing houses? Not everyone in foreclosure bought more house than they can afford. Three months of unemployment can lose the house. You can do everything right, and still get shot in the foot. It's not a personal failing. I've heard that health care costs is one of the leading causes of personal bankruptcy.

But I guess bragging that you gave for Haiti has more cachet than saying you helped save a house for a family of five - even though the family had no more control over what happened to them than the Haitians did.

And then there's Scott Brown, the guy who won Ted Kennedy's seat. He campaigned on a promise to kill the healthcare reform bill. Campaigning is very costly, and yet he has several million left over! Those were donations, from people who have it to give. And they gave it to stop health care reform. Guess which group(s) above they probably fall into.

I'm getting the impression that Americans, who like to think they are very generous as a people, will give only for the kudos, or to protect what they have. They'll buy praise, or they'll protect their asses, but they don't give to whoever needs just because it's needed.

I don't understand.

Go kiss someone working in a soup kitchen. They may not have it to give, but they give anyway.
.