Posts from — July 2009

La Fête Nationale
Bastille Day

Thank you for the help with the Revolution.

Happy Birthday Александра.

Some background.

Note: Yesterday was a rest day on Le Tour de France. Today’s stage is much flatter, and the French riders should be going all out to win the stage.

From the BBC, Cats ‘exploit’ humans by purring

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a “soliciting purr” to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.

Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a “cry”, with a similar frequency to a human baby’s.

The team said cats have “tapped into” a human bias – producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

“Soliciting” ? I think not. It’s imperative. Just try ignoring it at 5AM and the outraged meow will follow.

Yesterday Avedon Carol noted that a single payer system would reduce the cost of malpractice insurance, as the bulk of those awards is to cover the future medical costs of the plaintiffs.

Almost every type of insurance you buy, auto, home, business, workman’s comp, disability, etc. includes some form of medical coverage for you or others. If everyone already has health care coverage, the cost goes down. Given that health care costs rise faster than any other segment of the economy, the upward pressure on premiums will be significantly reduced.

Single payer reduces everyone’s costs.

An opinion piece at McClatchy’s reminded me of Jimmy Carter’s address to the nation on July 15, 1979. This link provides audio, video, and a transcript of the speech that the GOP and media called the “malaise speech”, although “malaise” isn’t mentioned, and Carter called The Crisis of Confidence.

I recommend reading it because Jimmy Carter sounds extremely boring when he gets serious, and this was a very serious speech. This is his diagnosis of the national problem thirty years ago:

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They’ve come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

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NBC has reported: “President Barack Obama has chosen Alabama family physician, Dr. Regina Benjamin, to be the next surgeon general, White House sources have confirmed to NBC News.”

I’m familiar with Dr. Benjamin and her clinic over in Bayou La Batre on the Alabama Gulf Coast, and it’s story of rising from Katrina, to be struck down by fire, and then being rebuilt. I admire her dedication to her patients.

The Times-Picayune fleshes out the bare announcement: a BS from Xavier in New Orleans, MD from the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and an MBA from Tulane.

While most reports mention her recent award of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Nelson Mandela Award in 1998, the T-P notes that Pope Benedict awarded her a distinguished service medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice and a commenter mentioned the Mother Teresa National Caring Award.

A better choice than CNN’s “medical talking head”, unless you support choice. I don’t claim to know for certain what Dr. Benjamin’s views are on “family planning”, but a medal from Pope Benedict, and this announcement following a meeting between the Pope and the President don’t exactly point towards support from the doctor for empowering women. I hope I’m wrong.

Update: DonoWho’s Catholic League calls this “an excellent choice”.

Wendy Victoria is a columnist for the Local Puppy Trainer, last seen complaining about the religious chatzkies that festoon the tax collector’s office. She now writes about local health care:

The patient spent 12 hours at a local hospital and during that half-day, ran up a $20,000 bill for lab tests and consumed $160,000 worth of drugs.

It’s hard to imagine spending that much money that quickly.

But you have to remember, this is the world of hospitals, where patients don’t have the chance to do comparison shopping. Heck, we don’t even know what they’re doing half the time, much less what it should cost.
…

But it seems like the final bills have no basis in reality. Nor do hospitals expect to actually be paid the amount they bill. Of the $600,000-plus in total costs, the hospitals will get about $30,000 from the insurance company, according to the statements.

What’s wrong with this picture?

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Low cost housing is at a premium in this area. The Section 8 rules are so intrusive for landlords and tenants that few people want to put up with them. It is all well and good, that you need oversight of public money, but it is stupid to spend more money on inspections, that you spend on housing.

Getting low cost housing built around here is another problem, because local governments that depend on property taxes don’t want it. These same politicians don’t have a problem reducing or eliminating those same taxes for commercial development, but they don’t want poor people hanging around.

Then there are the developers.

The Pensacola News Journal reports on one of them: Land trust probe deepens

In October 2004, John Wyche paid the Escambia County School District $64,000 for the former L.A. Kirksey Elementary School on North D Street in downtown Pensacola.

Three years later, Wyche sold the property for $160,000 to the Escambia County Community Land Trust, a nonprofit organization of which he was executive director.

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Pierrick Fedrigo of France took stage 9 and picked up 26 seconds on the leaders to move from 111 to 86 overall. Egoi Martinez of Spain captured the polka dot jersey, while yellow, green, and white are unchanged, and AG2R still leads the teams.

1. Rinaldo Nocentini (I/AG2R) 34:24:21 [yellow jersey]
2. Alberto Contador (E/Astana) +:06
3. Lance Armstrong (US/Astana) +:08
4. Levi Leipheimer (US/Astana) +:39
5. Bradley Wiggins (GB/Garmin) +:46
6. Andréas Klöden (D/Astana) +:54
7. Tony Martin (D/Team Columbia) +01:00 [white jersey]
8. Christian Vande Velde (US/Garmin) +01:24
9. Andy Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +01:49
10. Vincenzo Nibali (I/Liquigas) +01:54

Selected others:

18. Cadel Evans (AUS/Silence) +03:07
46. Franco Pellizotti (I/Liquigas) +14:49 [red numbers]
48. Egoi Martinez (E/Euskatel) +15:30 [polka dot jersey]
50. Nicolas Roche (IRE/AG2R) +16:45
62. David Millar (GB/Garmin) +27:18
86. Pierrick Fedrigo (F/BBox) +39:43 stage 9 winner
121. Thor Hushovd (NOR/Cervelo) +1:04:32 [green jersey]
135. Mark Cavendish (GB/Team Columbia) +1:13:54

From the BBC Cycling results and the official results sites.

There has been some level of adverse reaction to the fashion choices of the President’s eldest daughter. While I am as reticent as anyone else who spends their life in jeans and t-shirts to make style pronouncements, I would like to point out a bit of an error in symbolism.

That is the original form of the symbol involved. Somewhere in a box with other detritus of my life I have a pin of the earliest form that arrived here from the UK in the early 1960s and a later version that I was given in Britain by a very earnest young woman who was attempting to convince me of the righteousness of her cause while I was looking for an entrance to the Underground. The cause was nuclear disarmament, and the symbol has been associated with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain since it, the symbol, was created in 1958.

Those are the semaphore flag codes that the designer used as the basis for his graphic, and they are literally an N and a D in the code, as in Nuclear Disarmament.

Given that the young lady’s father had recently completed an agreement in Russia to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, it is hardly inappropriate. There has been a great deal of ranting and raving about nuclear weapons in North Korea, and the possibility of nuclear weapons in Iran, so it is somewhat curious that the rightwing lint have their shorts in a wad over two t-shirts with the symbol for nuclear disarmament on them. I was under the impression that they felt the proliferation of nuclear weapons, at least for non-NRA members, was inappropriate.

In closing let me just send the ranters a short message:

The Miami Herald reports on the real problem:

Zelaya is facing four charges: abuse of power, treason, usurping his duties and attempts against the form of government. Only treason and attempts against the form of government might be considered “political” charges, legal experts said.

Any legal woes for Zelaya stem from a single issue: his aggressive pursuit of a national referendum that he hoped would allow him to rewrite the constitution.

As congress and the courts legally blocked him each step of the way, Zelaya switched tactics, ignored rulings and fired those who got in the way. It came to a crisis point on June 25 when he rallied his supporters to break into a government building and seize the impounded referendum material, which was under guard. That was the last straw.

On June 26, the Supreme Court ordered his arrest, according to documents provided by the attorney general’s office. On the morning of June 28 — the day the referendum was to take place — masked soldiers escorted Zelaya at gunpoint onto an airplane in his pajamas and flew him to Costa Rica.

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Luis Leon Sanchez Gil of Spain won stage 8 and moved up to 11^th from 24^th; Sandy Casar of France was awarded the red numbers for his moves in the stage; Christophe Kern of France is the new “king of the hills” winning the polka dot jersey; and Thor Hushovd of Norway took the green jersey from Mark Cavendish with a 9 point lead among the sprinters.

In addition AG2R moved ahead of Astana by 3 seconds in the team competition.

1. Rinaldo Nocentini (I/AG2R) 25:44:32 [yellow jersey]
2. Alberto Contador (E/Astana) +:06
3. Lance Armstrong (US/Astana) +:08
4. Levi Leipheimer (US/Astana) +:39
5. Bradley Wiggins (GB/Garmin) +:46
6. Andréas Klöden (D/Astana) +:54
7. Tony Martin (D/Team Columbia) +01:00 [white jersey]
8. Christian Vande Velde (US/Garmin) +01:24
9. Andy Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +01:49
10. Vincenzo Nibali (I/Liquigas) +01:54

Selected others:

11. Luis Leon Sanchez Gil (E/Caisse) +02:16
18. Cadel Evans (AUS/Silence) +03:07
22. Sandy Casar (F/Francaise) +03:58 [red numbers]
58. Nicolas Roche (IRE/AG2R) +16:45
77. David Millar (GB/Garmin) +27:18
92. Christophe Kern (F/Confidis) +33:15 [polka dot jersey]
110. Thor Hushovd (NOR/Cervelo) +40:09 [green jersey]
131. Mark Cavendish (GB/Team Columbia) +49:31

From the BBC Cycling results and the official results sites.

In Western China the Xinjiang protests continue despite the claims that everything is “under control”.

In Iran the opposition has switched to distributed demonstrations, small demonstrations in multiple cities to remind the authorities that nothing is settled. If the government keeps up their current program, they’ll soon pass the US in the percentage of the population in prison.

The CBC correctly files this under its “Oddities” category: Air Canada ordered to pay Montreal doctor $1,000 for mid-air consultation

MONTREAL – Air Canada has been ordered to pay a Montreal doctor $1,000 in compensation for having to perform medical duties during an international flight in 2006.

That is less than the $3,058 initially sought by Dr. Henry Coopersmith, which he calculated as the equivalent of an executive-class fare, the value of medical services rendered and compensation for a day of vacation lost.
…

Coopersmith and his wife were on a Montreal-Paris flight on Oct. 11, 2006, when cabin crew implored him to help a woman who was suffering from an anxiety attack.

Coopersmith also had to fill out numerous forms and claimed he did not get any sleep during the transatlantic flight.

What a wonderful human being. Three thousand dollars for a consultation is what this guy thinks he’s worth and he filed suit to get it. I wouldn’t go to him on a bet with someone else’s money, because he obviously went into medicine for the paycheck.

Brice Feillu (F/Agritubel), 29^th +04:26 overall, won the stage and the polka dot jersey in the first of the serious climbs of the Tour. Most of the field was scrambled.

Overall standings:

1. Rinaldo Nocentini (I/AG2R) 25:44:32 [yellow jersey]
2. Alberto Contador (E/Astana) +:06
3. Lance Armstrong (US/Astana) +:08
4. Levi Leipheimer (US/Astana) +:39
5. Bradley Wiggins (GB/Garmin) +:46
6. Andréas Klöden (D/Astana) +:54
7. Tony Martin (D/Team Columbia) +01:00 [white jersey]
8. Christian Vande Velde (US/Garmin) +01:24
9. Andy Schleck (LUX/Saxo Bank) +01:49
10. Vincenzo Nibali (I/Liquigas) +01:54

Further back:

18. Cadel Evans (AUS/Silence) +03:07
21. Christophe Riblon (F/AG2R) +03:20 [red numbers]
28. Nicolas Roche (IRE/AG2R) +04:25
29. Brice Feillu (F/Agritubel) +04:26 [polka dot jersey] stage 7 winner
39. Fabian Cancellara (CH/Saxo Bank) +05:37
110. David Millar (GB/Garmin) +27:18
121. Mark Cavendish (GB/Team Columbia) +28:23 [green jersey]

From the BBC Cycling results and the official results sites.