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Keeping people healthy will be critical in the future of health care. Duh.

However, having never seen an x-ray of anyone that showed nothing wrong, I would suggest this:

We have a tremendous opportunity to mandate the use of our advanced diagnostic and investigative methods, equipment and protocols to establish a baseline profile for each of us while healthy. This would feed the statistical engines that must apparently be kept running for the endless publication of studies and their announcements of correlations between this behaviour and that malady. It would also give us an idea of what we look like when we’re healthy and provide a great reservoir of data to be studied and evaluated by health care professionals of all kinds. Then, when we are sick or injured and need to return to our traditional model of "study what’s gone wrong and fix it when it’s broke," we would have more to work with. 

A full and comprehensive nothing-wrong diagnostic would also provide a glut of data for the proposed universal electronic medical records that we will soon have - want them or not.  If we can have no assurance that these records will be handled appropriately, the least we can do is load them down with as much valid data as possible - even if we can't be sure it will ever be validated.

posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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First, to the issue as presented:

The entire economy turns on the aggregate behavior of its participants. If enough people stop spending on a particular commodity or service, some of those who provide them go out of business. Those who go out of business represent a subsequent ‘wave’ of diminished spending and diminished spending capacity, and another ‘layer’ of providers begins to suffer. If enough people and businesses operate on sufficiently thin margins, the tipping point for collapse of the entire system is determined by smaller fluctuations in the driving aggregate and is reached sooner and that collapse is harder to overcome – some activities will be permanently jettisoned in a recovery. We will quickly move beyond deciding how many cars we can drive at one time and how many plasma TVs we can watch at one time to deciding how many rooms we need to heat and which of our children get new shoes. Some of us have already had to make those decisions.

Now my observations:

An economic model that demands and depends on growth cannot long survive.

The myth of the self-equilibrating marketplace should be seen for what it is – a myth. If regulation itself can be regulated, we have a chance. But, in the face of the special interests involve, maybe we have no chance at all.

A work ethic which is subverted into a drive for all that can be brought within your grasp instead of enough to sustain you will eventually be seen to be unworkable.

I paraphrase a known linguist and social/political commentator: Take a step back and see – in whose interest is it that things remain as they are? Certainly not yours and mine.

posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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Loud, sometimes disruptive, in-your-face protests might be polarizing, but they do serve to give people an opportunity to decide which side they’re on. Which side you’re on can determine whether you consider the protest action to be disruptive – and whether that’s a bad thing.

Protests help bring issues to the public’s attention, and help elevate the ambient consciousness – never a bad thing. Protests bring public (voters’) awareness to issues so that they might get some attention when related matters come to a vote – and real change comes at the polls as well as in the courts.

On the other hand, I wonder about situations where protest can’t accomplish the desired result, where protest brings attention but no change and the protested action goes ahead unabated and with ruinous results. If the protest is about logging the last redwood, do you want to go to the polls or to court and be right? Or, do you want to save that last redwood? If the protest is against turning a park into a parking lot, do you want to be right but defeated? Or, do you want to stop construction of a parking lot?

Sometimes protest is not what’s called for. Sometimes, we don’t need protests followed by a ballot initiative followed by an election followed by a court decision followed by an appeal followed by another court decision. Sometimes direct action is necessary. Unfortunately, most direct action is illegal. But, it has such a visceral appeal for those who feel desperate at being marginalized, disenfranchised and ignored – it’s no wonder there are people out there who think George Hayduke was a real person.

posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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I am constantly amazed at peoples' ability to function in and navigate through a sensible, physical world ? and still cower behind the variable B.S. of their particular superstition. I am also amazed at the number of political candidates who seem to think I'll consider their belief in spirits and invisible friends to be a qualification for a job that will allow them to affect my life.

Any belief system that posits an omniscient and omnipotent deity like Christianity or Islam also predisposes its followers to assume the most arrogant of postures ? created in the image of their god. Simultaneously, they are enjoined to believe that they come from "sin" and must spend their lives preparing for some brass ring when they die. No wonder that "believers" can't appreciate the sense of awe and wonder a convinced atheist feels when looking out at the vast grandeur of the galaxies and the spaces between them. We are intimately aware that there is something greater than ourselves, but it's right there in front of us ? not up in cloud-land ? and it is part of us and is our source.

How would I react except with patient bemusement when the Vatican says it's ok to believe that there may be intelligent life on other planets. That's big of the Pope to concede such a thing ? credible authority that he is with his red shoes, dress and funny hat.

How would any reasonable person react except with outrage and disgust to some of the barbaric practices protected and propagated under the shield of religion ? mass public circumcision of boys in sports stadiums in the middle east, "honor" killings (murders) of female relatives who had the audacity to be looked at or touched (or assaulted) by a man not related to them, wholesale "shunning" of congregants who dare to question the "true faith" of their church, excommunication of those who end their marriages as if the administrative infrastructure of their faith system had any real authority over them. How else but with incredulity should I respond to those who assert that they have found "the way" and proceed to convince me with their circular reasoning and reliance on null authority?

Those who cling so stubbornly to their faith without examining it from outside suffer from a kind of fear peculiar to the small-minded. They fear that, without the over-arching protection of an agency (God) upon which to hang responsibility for their own creation and upon whose glory to hitch their destiny-wagon, they will have to fall back on their own inadequate devices to determine right from wrong. Surely, being mere humans (although claiming the apex of so-called creation), we cannot possibly have any way to determine right from wrong without the omniscient guidance of a God - "Great Sky-Father" - who himself exhibits the manners and ethics of a spoiled child.

Don?t get me wrong ? I absolutely respect anyone's right to have any religion they choose. I absolutely do not respect the religion itself, or its practice if it impinges in any way upon my life. Religion is intellectually dishonest and dangerously obstructive to real personal growth, and I will not be dragged along by the slipstream of your flight heavenward. I will never grant any authority over my life to any one who tells me ? especially with a straight face ? that they will explain "God" to me. When the rapture comes, can I have your car?

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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I pay for digital dialtone. Period. It is no business or concern of the ISP what I use that dialtone for. If the ISP wishes to set download limits, they have an obligation to state what those limits are. Their current policy would be functionally comparable to my wireless phone provider cutting me off because I talk to more friends than family on my friends & family plan. Further, thier specious representation that they are just managing their service for the benefit of thier customers is an insult - they are managing their service for the benefit of thier stockholders. If they would just look around, they would grasp the greater reality that their stockholders would be better served as a result of giving better service to their subscribers.

The ISP may state that they are making assumptions, or may allow the appearance that they are making assumptions, regarding what users are doing with their bandwidth, but that opens to speculation how they can even tell. They are risking more than just complaints and exposure in the press if they are caught with their hand in our "cookie" jar. To purport that they are operating on the assumption that most users are just surfing the internet, making online purhcases and sending email, is just another insult to the many users who make serious and vital use of their connections. Internet access is a utility and necessary to many of us. Those executives who don't want to face the cameras and the microphones can easily find themselves wakened to irate calls on their "unlisted" home phones at 3am.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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