Screaming from this empty room
Give me a sign

The following was lifted from Scot's Facebook:

"Last night, for the first time, Liam reached into his book basket and grabbed a book, then holding it up in front of him, he carried it across the room to his Daddy. Then he wanted up on my lap. So we read "The Monster at the End of This Book" together a couple times. It was about the sweetest thing ever."

Hosed

I've just been informed that the premiums for my Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan plan -- which does not cover office visit charges -- is going up 29% this year. This was not a negotiation, it was a unilateral price increase. The rationale given in the letter is that it's the fault of the State of Michigan for requiring BCBSM to cover people rejected by other insurers for pre-existing conditions. As if that wasn't true the previous year.

All I know is that I didn't get consulted on this price change, that it will have no direct effect on the quality of my coverage or health care vs. 2008-09 rates, and that it's utterly ridiculous. No other good or service in our economy saw a 29% price increase.

Time for single-payer national health care.

My sistah's new blog

Go check out "Michigan Mugs and Meals," the product of one insanely talented and creative sister-in-law of mine. It's a blog about locally-sourced foods in the Great Lakes state.

Are we naked apes because we're aquatic?

Elaine Morgan talks about the hasty rejection of the idea that humans spent some of their evolutionary development in an aquatic environment, and makes the case for looking into the question:

Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast

From The Independent:

But the first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago. On top of this, there is a problem of chronic under-investment by oil-producing countries, a feature that is set to result in an "oil crunch" within the next five years which will jeopardise any hope of a recovery from the present global economic recession, he said.

The expert quoted is the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, so when he talks, I tend to believe him. If you read or heard about "Twilight in the Desert," by Matth Simmons, he essentially said the same thing about four years ago: The oil peak is coming, because new production cannot replace the insanely rich gushers which are now being tapped out. The remaining oil is deeper underwater, lower quality, harder to extract and harder to find. So there's no way to replace the oil which used to come flowing out of Arabian sands like water from a spring.

It ain't about when we run out. It's about when we can't squeeze it out fast enough.

And if we do burn it all, the planet's screwed, so why not make the change now?

Health Care -- an analogy

So there's a massive debate in Washington about how to remake American health care. Our health care "system" -- well, it isn't a system at all, because that would imply some sort of design -- but our health care approach is nothing short of madness. It is a system without price tags, competition or any of the other hallmarks of a free market. And yet this bastardized model is being defended by the right in this country as the "best health care system in the world." Which it demonstrably isn't.

The chief shortcomings of our approach are these: 1) It does not produce acceptable health outcomes; 2) It is obscenely expensive; 3) It is grossly unfair; and 4) It is mind-bogglingly complex. There is a simple reason for this: Health care institutions in the United States, from hospitals to pharmaceutical companies to medical-device suppliers are all constructed around the premise of profitability, not health outcomes. Thus, our health care system fails at producing healthy people, but succeeds wildly in producing profits. This is not mysterious.

Look, I took economics in college, and I get the concept of free markets. I embrace the concept of free markets. I love free markets. They can work wonders. But the idea that we have a "free market" health care system is a fallacy, a lie, a deception. We have a semi-free market in health insurance, which is not at all the same thing.

To illustrate my meaning, I want to give you an analogy. We all need food to live, so imagine that you are going to the supermarket. In reality, supermarkets are vigorously competitive, free-market businesses, which compete ferociously over pennies and nickels. There are numerous competitors, many sellers and buyers, and very transparent information about pricing. Every item has a price tag. You can compare items side-by-side. Good products and brands engender loyalty. People make rational choices on the basis of taste, quality, price, and preference. It works.

Now imagine the supermarket worked like our health care system... How would it be different? You arrive and are issued a cart. Before you are allowed to shop, a stern official-looking person checks your credit. You then must wait your turn to enter the store to fill your cart. About an hour later, you are issued a wrist band and permitted to enter, attended by a highly-educated foodsycian employed by the supermarket. He talks with you sympathetically, and steers you down certain aisles, recommending certaing foods.

Nothing has a price tag on it; it would be difficult to mark each item anyhow, because the price could vary by a factor of 10 depending on which shelf you took it from. A can of mushrooms from the end cap could run you $7, while one from the back of the regular shelf of canned mushrooms might be $.70. Or vice-versa. But you won't know until later... Anyhow, you proceed up one aisle and down the next, with your foodsycian urging certain foods and forbidding others. What he says seems to make sense, but you're not really certain, and he's really not answering your questions about pasta. He won't even let you look at the Mexican foods. You bite your tongue, in part to quell your rising hunger.

At the end of one aisle, he stops you. "Wait here for your frozen-food specialist." You wait here for three months, starting to feel a bit faint. Finally, your specialist arrives, and leads you through the freezer section, adding numerous unlabled products of significant weight to your cart. You don't know what they are, but are told they're very important. You sigh.

Finally, it is time to check out. This part is a breeze: You just put everything in bags and put it in your car and go home. They have been keeping track of your selections the whole time. They're very conscientious about keeping track of what went into the cart. A few weeks later, a bill arrives. This is the first time you get to see the price of any of the items in your cart, most of which you have already consumed. The charge is $10,503. Separate bills arrive a week later for the services of the foodsycian and frozen-food specialist, adding another $2,372 to the tab.

That's pretty hard to take, but things are looking up. You've been offered a job with a new company. You go in to meet the H.R. guy, and he makes his offer: A good salary, and they offer food insurance. They will cover about 3/4 of your food bill, but there are quite a few rules you'll have to follow, and lots of forms to fill out. Anything, you tell him, would be better than the shock of opening another bill for 10 grand! He smiles -- he knows that you'll soon be like the rest of his employees: Kept in the fold through a carrot-and-stick system -- happy to have the job, and terrified of losing that food insurance.

This is our health care system, America. Would you vote for it?

It can be a tough sport all right

Panamanian player Gabriel Gomez "misses the ball" and gets American Robbie Rogers instead in a typically rough game in the Gold Cup series. Ever been kicked by someone with those legs wearing cleats?

The U.S. won the game 2-1 on a goal scored after another Panamanian star kicked an American player in the gut. The U.S. plays in the semi-final game on Thursday.

I thought this was cool

One of the things about the Internet that I continue to find fascinating is its ability to de-mystify things that have long been mysterious. I know: The Web's been around a while now. But in the pre-Web world I cut my teeth in, lots of specialized information was almost completely inaccessible to the non-expert. Now, it's at your fingertips, and at times I still get a thrill of wonder about that.

For example, the radio spectrum. As a regular person, your interaction with the upper reaches of the electromagnetic spectrum was "Channel 12" or "WSGW, AM 790." If you were a curious type, you might associate these "stations" with the idea of a continuum of electromagnetic waves. But did you give thought to where they shoe-horn in the police radio? What else uses those waves?

Now you can see how it's all sliced and diced in exquisite detail. Take a look at this. It's a wall chart from the federal government. Turns out there is an extraordinary amount of stuff going on between Channel 6 and Channel 7 on your teevee. It actually boggles the mind.

Like I said, pretty cool to be able to see this stuff without having to dig around the more arcane corners of your public library.

Peccadilloes

So...

The Democratic governor of New York frequents hookers and resigns. This too, I believe I understand.

But the Republican Senator from Louisiana frequents hookers and doesn't. No comprende.

And the Republican governor of South Carolina freely and annoyingly proclaims his forbidden love for an Argentinian woman, and for the purposes of a final fornication with her, he fled the state under false pretenses without notifying anyone. He does not resign. I guess he didn't break any laws, technically, but I'm somewhat surprised that this did not destroy him.

And the Republican governor of Alaska suddenly decides it's in the best interests of her state if she resigns. While I'm inclined to agree with her, I'm nevertheless surprised by this, too.

I used to understand how these things worked, generally, but I freely confess that I can no longer make any sense of the way Republicans handle these things.

Soccer Contrarian

Well, I've been stewing on the U.S. Soccer loss to Brazil for a few days now. The Americans suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder, and apparently sent two different teams to this Confederations Cup tournament this month in South Africa. For the first two games and the second half of the game against Brazil, the Americans apparently fielded a hapless bunch of half-hearted defeatists. Against Egypt, Spain and for one half against Brazil, they sent a world-class squad of soccer players. I'd like to see more of that squad.

The conventional wisdom I'm seeing browsing U.S. press coverage of this tournament is all touchy-feely happy talk about how the team exceeded expectations, how they played well, how they tried hard, etc. What a load of bull. It's poppycock and I'm not having any of it.

This team needs to understand that they fell apart. Any other interpretation of events is self-deception. In the FINAL of a major international tournament, America's A-Team of experienced international professionals blew a 2-0 halftime lead by playing too defensively and failing to maintain possession of the soccer ball. Everything that was working for the U.S. in the first half stopped working. The primary problem was turnovers, the result of unforced errors and bad tactical decisions. The team's fitness is also a shortcoming, because they looked gassed at the end of 90 minutes, and the Brazilians did not.

If a baseball team coughs up a late-inning lead in the playoffs, or a football team blows a 14-point second-half lead in the Super Bowl, if a hockey team gives up 3 goals in the third period, the healthy reaction is to point some fingers at themselves and account for what went wrong.

All this talk about moral victories and valuable experience enables a loser's mentality -- the idea that the team really had no business being in the final in the first place. But I've seen this team whip Spain and Portugal in major tournaments. I've seen them go toe-to-toe with Italy in a World Cup which Italy ultimately won. So maybe it's time to start getting used to the idea that our boys belong on the world stage, and to hold ourselves to the same standards our opponents do.

From the AP:

"We're at the point where we don't want respect, we want to win," said Landon Donovan, whose goal in the 27th minute gave the United States a 2-0 lead. "There's no guarantee we ever get back to a final game like this, so it's disappointing."

I'm with Donovan. If the U.S. had played 90 minutes of neck-and-neck soccer against Brazil and come up just short at 3-2, maybe I'd buy the sunny talk. But in this game, in an incredible position to win at half-time, the squad fell apart. They ought to be angry about it.

If they're not angry, they're not ready to win.


Photo credit: AFP/Getty via STLToday

Statistics

According to WikiAnswers, about 150,000 people die every day on this planet. On June 25, Michael Jackson, a talented but troubled star, was one of them. If I tell you that, honestly, I don't care any more about his death than the other 149,999 others, does that make me a bad person?

I understand that Jackson's death is a notable news occurance, as the deaths of famous people often are. But what is really added to the conversation by the 10,000th bad interview with someone who knew him tangentially? How is our understanding of the world deepened by yet another 10 minutes of inane, uninformed blather and speculation about which drugs the man may or may not have ingested? And aren't these solemn "memorials" to Jackson all over my teevee in somewhat poor taste, considering that whether or not the old pervert was convicted of any crimes, he freely admitted having strangers kids sleep in his bed? I mean, isn't there a disconnect there?

No, I don't mourn the man. I never met him. People seem to think because he peers out at them from their CD rack, and because they've seen a lot of footage of him in courtrooms on their teevee, they have a personal relationship with the man. Well, I see James Carville and Wolf Blitzer a lot, too, and I don't feel much of a relationship with them, either.

On the other hand, I remember being really moved when Johnny Cash died. And I never met him, either. But I was moved by the story about the loss of his wife, June Carter, and the way he threw himself into recording new material in the last few months of his life. It never occurred to me, though, to drive down to the hospital and stand vigil for the man, or to build a maudlin online memorial. For the life of me, I can't understand what that would have added to the Universe.

After all, the day he died, 149,999 other people also passed on, and I probably met at least a few of them.

Sanford's Stimulus Plan

Apparently the soon-to-be-former governor from South Carolina had his own stimulus plan in mind when he tried to turn down the federal government's largesse. I mean, we all understand that these blow-dried hypocrites are getting a little action on the side, but when your action on the side is on the other side of the equator, that just shows a disregard for American jobs. At least Gov. Spitzer was keeping Americans employed with his sexual peccadilloes.

A hat-tip today to William Rivers Pitt:

There are other things in life besides mayhem, madness and butchery, a fact South Carolina's Republican Gov. Mark Sanford was kind enough to remind us of this week. There is irony of the purest ray serene; there is hypocrisy like a house on fire, and there is perfect comedy, and when a man like Governor Sanford takes the time and energy to combine all three, the magnificent absurdity of it all reminds us of the joy that still exists in this cruel and crazy world.

Ah, the Party of Reagan parties on...

another year

Happy Birthday Chilled-out Dude

Sayonara, long distance

I'm on the phone now with James at AT&T. We've considered eliminating our land line completely, but the new father part of me says we'd only need 911 one time to justify keeping it. And all our friends have the number. So instead, I'm cutting back what I can.

First, I'm having him drop our long-distance service, since a look at our last bill shows 4 long-distance calls made last month, a total of about 20 minutes, which cost us about $14. Obviously, that's not worth it when we have cell phones which work just as well. Now James is telling me that there's a one-time $9 fee to get rid of them. In an actual free market, you don't pay service providers for the honor of NOT using their service, but we live in a corporatarchy. And they wonder why people are ditching their land lines?

I'm also getting rid of the Non-Published Service, which is costing us $5.50 a month. Having an unpublished number is nice, since it keeps annoying spam calls to a minimum. But is it really worth $66 a year? I guess we'll find out.

If I start getting a bunch of telemarketing calls, I can always just get rid of the phone line altogether. If I can afford the fee for that, that is.

Michigan Death Watch

It's hard to wrap your mind around the devastating blows the state of Michigan has been taking, but this may help put things in perspective: The state just canceled $740 million in (badly needed) road work because it doesn't have the money to match federal highway spending. The math isn't all crystal clear from the Detroit News story, but at one point it's mentioned that the state stands to lose $576 million in federal money, which will be distributed to other states. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

So here's the obvious solution: We raise a couple hundred million in taxes, and the feds send over half a billion dollars our way, which we can spend on good jobs for Michiganders, improve our infrastructure, attract businesses and so on... Seems like a NO BRAINER, right? It's like getting those matching 401(k) dollars from your employer: You tighten your belt somewhere else in order to get all the matching money that's on the table. Only a fool would be so penny-wise and pound-foolish as to give away that kind of free money.

Unfortunately, Michigan has just such a fool. Now, I understand that Republicans have a deep feeling that we shouldn't raise taxes. Ever. Under any circumstances, including war or economic catastrophe (because those are the present circumstances). But doesn't this seem like it would be money well spent? Not so, says the top Republican in the Michigan Senate -- a man worried, as always, about winning elections rather than putting food on your table. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop says, "Citizens have been clear about not paying higher taxes in this economy."

Hey Mike: Get the money. "This economy" desperately needs this work and this sort of federal investment. There are few better ways to invest the taxpayer's money than in some modern roads. We're all fed up with Michigan's crappy highways, and they drive away vital investment.

Discussing this story with my friend Sue, she tells the story of Gov. Jennifer Granholm bringing in a CEO who was thinking of moving his company to Michigan. As the story goes, they pick him up at the airport, but before they get to the meeting he says, "I've seen enough. There's no way I'm moving my company to a state with such awful roads." Is the story true? I dunno, but it sounds about right to me.

CLICK

Where have you been?

Fair question. I've been on a sabbatical of sorts from Arboretum as we welcomed a new tree to the Woods. As most of you know, Liam Joseph was born on Dec. 27th, and since arriving in the world at 7 lbs. 15 oz., he has more than doubled his weight and stretched out several more inches. He's really thriving, and he's so happy most of the time.

I wish I had been using this blog to post pictures and note his progress, but the truth is that I've never been fully comfortable with the voyeuristic aspects of the blogosphere. There's a generational gap between me and the millenials who are coming up behind me when it comes to privacy and personal space. I don't feel any NEED at all to put aspects of my personal life out there for the world to see. In fact, my father does more of that over on Birches than I ever have here.

So, I've been busy with Liam and work and home life, and the blog just seemed like a commitment that needed to go on the back burner. A blog is like a garden -- or an arboreum, ahem -- in that it really needs love and tending, and I couldn't give that for the past few months. I was burned out on politics after the election, and with the arrival of my beautiful son, I just turned inward to family and friends.

I'm back. I don't know how often I'll add items, but I promise to keep Liam pics coming, because I know that's what y'all really want. :-)

A memory. Comments welcome