Loner Updates

Sorry for all the light blogging - I've been in a frenzy building the new company/web application. I also installed (with a friend) a new carrying beam in the basement - the house is far more stable and level now.

In the meantime - check out the following links

• British Health Services uses private doctors for their own people. It's a lot like American public school teachers sending their own kids to private school. It's a dramatic lack of faith in the system, but I suppose the government knows best, just like they say.
• In Nebraska, the safe haven laws, usually intended for infants, can be used for children up to age 18. People have been coming in from out of state to abandon their teenagers.
  

Two from Newsweek

• Terrorist Triage - basically posits that the struggle is in fact winnable (to a large degree) and is in fact, won (as much as we're going to win). Remember though, that desperate times call for random vehicle searches.
• Women and their ovaries make for interesting reading
  

Wisdom from the Agitator

From his post on America and Life Expectancy

The United States counts all births as live if they show any sign of life, regardless of prematurity or size. This includes what many other countries report as stillbirths. In Austria and Germany, fetal weight must be at least 500 grams (1 pound) to count as a live birth; in other parts of Europe, such as Switzerland, the fetus must be at least 30 centimeters (12 inches) long. In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless. And some countries don't reliably register babies who die within the first 24 hours of birth. Thus, the United States is sure to report higher infant mortality rates.

The other factor here is that thanks to our access to medical technology, we're more likely to try to save premature deliveries that in other countries would result in stillbirths or miscarriages. So every time an infant dies in the U.S. that would never have been born alive (or counted as born alive) in other countries, it registers as a life that died at the age of "zero." That's a pretty significant downward-tug on the national life expectancy.

...

I'd actually like to see where we rank in average life expectancy from, say, the age of 30 or 35 onward. I couldn't find any such data, but it seems to me that would factor out much of the homicide problem, would negate the problems with how we measure infant mortality, and would probably result in a better showing for the U.S.

All quite true.

Michael Moore the inverted prophet

He did Bowling for Columbine, and the Democratic party changed positions on gun control, he did Fahrenheit 911 and Bush got re-elected, and now he has a new movie coming out on health care. Does that mean health care is going to be deregulated?

If Granny had wheels, she'd be a trolley

Starting with this review of a CNN.com Michael Moore's movie "Sicko is Socko". It prattles on and on about the inequalities and suffering that result from illness. All true most likely. Read that and ask yourself, "So What?" Is the same leviathan that brought you the Iraq War (or "Peace" if you prefer) likely to improve matters? Or for that matter, one that couldn't even find a way to discreetly have sex with interns?

The second one is "What if Lincoln Had Survived?", also on CNN.com. If they had the medical technology of today but not the 25th Amendment, what would have happened?

Isn't there some news site that caters to the person who is interested in news?

For far better non-news brain candy, check out this history of the 1920 Wall Street bombing. The perpetrators of that attack, much like the anthrax mailer, were never caught.

Monday rapid fire

• The best use of graphic thumbnails I've seen
• Calculate your Body Mass Index. This seems a tad unrealistic, and if this is what people are using to measure America's obesity "Epidemic" I'm much less impressed. It seems over broad and crappy. For instance, my ideal weight range is between 137 and 183, a difference of 46 pounds.
• Stirling Engines!
• Kurdistan, the other Iraq, it's where all of the American troops will be should a full fledged civil war break out. Described my Michael Totten as "a Muslim Utah". Shoul Iraq break up, this will be the country we subsidize most, besides Israel.
  
• $10 Panoramic Tripod Head - I need one of these.
  
• Apex Predators
• How much is inside....
• Cheap Handlebar mounts - something else I need.
• Milton Friedman TV!
  

Someone is finally doing this

I've often wondered why we don't have simple home medical testing kits for the most common problems one is likely to have. Just do a simple blood or urine sample at home once a month, and then send it off to be analyzed for the 15 most common (or cheapest to test for) illnesses and you're much more likely to catch something early. I would imagine legal liabilities are the likely culprit.

It would seem that they're doing something like this in Japan.

I predict that this will be a condition of health insurance in the future.