Obamacare

The WSJ has a pretty good op-ed piece today that breaks down the real motivation behind the many arguments related to universal health care. I personally support universal health care, but not the socialistic model proposed by our current leaders. The difference between the two lies with control of the system.

The concept of modern insurance has its roots with the first life insurance program invented by Benjamin Franklin. FDR expanded the concept with his new deal, and the US economy furthered it as employers competed for workers after WWII. The resulting sense of entitlement to free health care has created misplaced expectations for funding health care. We all need to eat better, exercise more, and become prudent consumers of health care. We should expect our health insurance to behave similar to home or auto insurance: it covers catastrophic expenses but not every nickel and dime.

Two comments from the op-ed that I really like:

1) health care inflation results more from r&d funding and technological advancements than it does from simple cost of living increases. Comparing the cost of health care today to the cost of health care in, say, 1960, is like comparing the cost of a big screen HD TV to a black and white model.

2) What is your first impression to the phrase "public housing?" You're likely to react the same to public health insurance. I don't look forward to governmental bureaucrats determining what treatments and costs are fair and what aren't. How far would they go? Is steak more egregious than hamburger? Is McDonald's OK but Applebee's not?

If we want to be France, let's just say so. But, don't tell me we will be the capitalistic leader of the free world and turn our lifestyle into Poland.

Hoto Toto Haiku

Eric Berger, the Chronicle Sci-Guy, posts on his blog about the benefits of probiotics for overall digestive health. Maybe taking a cue from those crafty San Antonians, he asks his readers to submit haiku on the poo/loo in order win a free sample of probiotics.

He also discusses the projected shuttle launch schedule, which may be delayed due to the "beta blockout". During the winter and summer soltice, the International Space Station is at its closest to the sun due to the obliquity of the eclipitic (my favorite new term of the day), which is the 23 degree tilt of the earth. Due to the alignment required to get proper benefit of the ISS's solar power panels, the shuttle would be docked to the ISS such that max temperatures reach unacceptable levels.

Angle of attack

Is difficult to manage

Space and loo alike.

The mural of the story

It is said that a picture paints a thousand words. Eric Berger has a link to this website that offers a range of short surveys that evaluate perspective on a variety of topics: religion, politics,disgustedness, and nature. It also offers a personality inventory. The site collects data from survey results in order to correlate political persuasion (conservative, liberal, etc.) with various other perspectives.

The lesson today in the high school Sunday School class in which I participate covered 1 Corinthians 8. Paul is addressing the concern in the church he founded in Corinth regarding eating sacrificial meat. Christianity hasn't observed sacrificial offerings for centuries, so it's difficult in the 21st century to understand the context of Paul's comments.

I apply Paul's lesson as a reminder of how to win friends and influence people. We are today blasted by more attempts at influence from more varied sources than any time in history. Few of us (at least in the US of A) make it through a day without seeing a billboard, a TV ad, or some other media attempting to convince us how to spend our time and money. We all influence and are influenced in ever increasing and creative forms.

As disciples, Christians are asked to set a good example, to be penitent and forgiving, and to love God and their neighbor. To do so requires honest self awareness. Below is my personality assessment. The green bars are me, the purple bars are all other respondents. So, I am pretty much middle of the road compared to the others who completed the survey. Since I don't know who completed it, I don't know if this is a good picture of me and society or not. Comments?

Whistling Straight

Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy on ESPN, has a brilliant piece today on the state of officiating in the NBA. He rails about the generally poor and inconsistent quality in the playoffs this year. 

He also provides some interesting history, such as why the NBA shot clock is 24 seconds. The reason: the NBA owner who thought of it in the 50's (partially as a result of a game in which 80 free throws were shot and another game in which the final score was 19-18) watched a lot of games and concluded that the most entertaining ones included 60 shots by each team. 120 shots spread over 48 minutes results in 1 shot every 24 seconds.

Now, if only I could find out who decided that the two slots in electrical plugs should be 5/8" apart, or why there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, or why pretty much the whole world, despite the many cultural and language differences, agrees that each minute should have 60 seconds and each hour 60 minutes.

That's all I have to contribute to today's mental flatulence.

Daily Pursuit

Pursuit is a pretty common word. Its origins trace back to the French words porsuite and porsivre and is the noun form of the verb pursue.

It is used in modern society in many contexts: police, literary, trivial, occupational. But today's context of choice is the pursuit of happiness. The Happy Guy has a lot of opinions about being happy, including quotes from a lot of famous people. Happy is just not easy to define. 

It is easy to be happy for an instant and then be not happy. It even easier to be happy with anticipation of being happy in the future, but then not be happy when the future arrives. Most of us like to believe that we want to be happy. But, most of us also don't really know how to. 

A founding principle of the US of A is the self-evident truth "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." We are not guaranteed happiness, but we are in America guaranteed the right to pursue it.

For me, happiness and the pursuit of it are not only intertwined, but are often the unintentional result of trying each day to love God and my neighbor as myself. But, this is so hard to do! Happiness is pursued and found in unexpected places and the harder I try to find it, the more it eludes me. There is no list of things to acquire or to do which would result in happiness from now on. 

There are days when I am not happy. My family, my friends, my neighbors don't always behave as I wish they did. Sometimes I get sick or injured or just don't feel any passion for the day. But, I am trying to learn to respond to the events of each day and not to react. By pursuing response and not reaction, I sometimes find myself happy without even knowing how I got there. 

So, I must remind myself each day to choose to be happy, to be thankful for the many opportunities with which I can pursue happiness, and to recognize that fortune has not let me go free.

Uncle O Wants You!

Random but Equal

Words of the day:

ecdysiast: stripper

eleemosynary: charitable

ebenezer: stone of hope; from 1  Samuel 4

sycophant: toadie; as in limey lover Taras

omphaloskepsis: contemplation of one's navel

Ariadne's thread: solving a problem through exhaustive application of logic

Occam's razor: parsimonious logic; solving a problem through gut instinct

Astrology: hopeless devotion to losing baseball teams