Disqus - Latest Comments for pingoldsby

Re: Sickened by SiCKO

pingoldsby — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:09:25 -0000

I watched SiCKO a while back and had a few thoughts. First of all, I noticed myself defending our healthcare system simply because the movie was so obviously biased to show the negatives of ours and the positives of theirs, and not the other side of the story. Ironically, while I believe in the message Mr. Moore was touting, I found myself defending the US healthcare system even more simply because I don't think all the facts were presented. From what I can recall, the benefits of our healthcare system are:

1) Innovation. Due to intense competition and money to be made, the US leads the world in innovative drugs and medical procedures.
2) The possibility of the best care in the world. While it's not accessible to everyone (which is the HUGE drawback), the competitive medical field brings the possibility of the best care in the world. Wealthy people from around the world travel here for medical care because of this.

The problems are:

1) Lack of accessibility. For those who don't have the money, even the most basic care is difficult to get.
2) Greed. Since we have a privatized system, insurance companies have a vested interest in maximizing profits, not lives saved.

Personally I think we need to set a standard for which everyone American should have a right to. Infant mortality and average lifespan are two factors in determining basic care. In general, an infant will only die if a mother does not have access to basic services during childbirth. Let's say, for example, we rate the effectiveness of healthcare an individual receives on a scale from 1 - 100. Just making up some numbers, let's say the US has a mean healthcare rating of 70 with a standard deviation of 30. Let's say Cuba has a mean healthcare rating of 30 with a standard deviation of 1. (Again, I'm just making up numbers). If an infant will only die if the mother has a healthcare system below rating 20, many more infants will die in the US--despite the obviously higher average healthcare rating--due to the huge range of healthcare scores received by individuals. In Cuba, on the other hand, despite a lower average score, pretty much everyone will have access to enough care to allow a newborn to survive.

And I think that is ultimately the problem we need to address in this nation: providing EVERYONE basic care. Not necessarily advanced, incredibly costly medicine, but the ability to see a Dr. and get the basic medications they need so they don't die at a young age or lose a baby. At the same time, I hope it will still be possibility for us to keep our innovation high by allowing those with more money to buy into the system and fund the research that let us develop new drugs, equipment and procedures. From the sound of his proposal, that sounds similar to what Obama is proposing: a federal insurance available to everyone that gives basic care, but still allows those who want to keep or buy superior plans to do so.

Re: Al Qaeda Endorses McCain?!

pingoldsby — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:45:43 -0000

Wow, just read the article. Pretty crazy.

Re: Attack of the Grammar Nazis

pingoldsby — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:05:53 -0000

I can't claim total innocence from grammar nazidom. The two main things that annoy me are:

"Same Difference"
This just doesn't make sense to me. Here's an example. Friend 1: "So we drove down to LA in my friend's BMW..." Friend 2: "You mean Mercedes?" Friend 1: "Yeah, same difference."

I guess by your one rule I understand what the person means. I'm assuming they mean "not important to the story" or something similar. Or maybe they mean "even though they're different, they're both luxury cars, which is what is important to the story." Either way, the phrase seems weird to me.

"Next Weekend"
This one bothers me and I think actually fails your one rule. I'm pretty sure common consensus is that next weekend means the weekend following "this weekend." So if it's Wednesday, as it is today, and someone says, "I'll be home next weekend," they mean the weekend of the 20th/21st of September. Either way, I generally need clarification that this is, in fact, what they mean because the wording is ambiguous. As an example, let's say you're giving someone driving directions. You're in the passenger seat and your friend is driving. You go through a stop sign (our analogy for the weekend) and start driving on an open road (representing the middle of the week). While driving on this open road you say to your friend, "turn right at the next stop sign." Does this mean turn right at the next stop sign you come to, or does it mean turn right at the stop sign after the next stop sign you come to? I think it's clear to most people that "next stop sign" means the next stop sign you come to. So it's confusing that "next weekend" means the weekend after the next weekend you come to.

The only way I can rationalize how "next weekend" is used is that perhaps week used to be possessive: "next week's end." In this case, "next week's end" makes sense in the way that "next weekend" is used.

Re: Obama on Beliefs vs. Values

pingoldsby — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:25:15 -0000

This was quite a nice speech. He does distort McCain's remarks a little bit, but according to McCain's tax policy the truth isn't that far from what Obama said.

Re: Green Web-Searching

pingoldsby — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:22:24 -0000

Wow, I read about forestle from your blog earlier and though it was pretty cool. I can see why google decided not to allow them to use their service but....

Interesting to see how this unfolds.

Re: Can You Guess What This Sentence is About?

pingoldsby — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:32:26 -0000

Oooh, I know, It's Richard Dawkins...I just watched his documentary and one of the section was called the Virus of Faith or something similar.

Re: A Few Links

pingoldsby — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:26:12 -0000

I was reading the drug prohibition article and then clicked through to the ecological affects of the Colombian cocaine trade. There was a picture of a burning rainforest with this statement:
"Shared Responsibility says that 2.2m hectares of the Colombian Amazon forest has been cleared to grow coca in 20 years. It is estimated that it will take between 100 and 600 years for just 1 hectare to recover"
Now, I think the article was a good one, and that we should be concerned about our old growth forests being lost to this sort of trade. But the statement kind of bothers me and sort of leads me to a brain-bender type question: "If it takes 100-600 years for 1 hectare to recover, how long will it take for 2.2 million hectares to recover?" Answer: 100-600 years. All the forest will start regrowing at the same rate (with the possible exception of fringe hectares which might regrow faster due to their proximity to live forests). The statement misleads you into thinking it will be (100-600) (2.2 million) = ~1 billion years.

Yes, it's nitpicky, but when someone says something wrong or misleading on the internet it's our responsibility to take hours out of our day to publicly ridicule them!
http://xkcd.com/386/

Re: Assorted Links

pingoldsby — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:30:02 -0000

I read that whole Malwebolence article...quite interesting!

Re: McCain Plays The Race Card Card

pingoldsby — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:35:21 -0000

I have to say, McCain's campaign so far has been pretty disappointing. He's basically just feeding off of Obama's celebrity and creating negative ads about him. Perhaps it's partially to get free publicity on youtube/the media?

I was also disappointed to see, right after attacking McCain for using numerous negative ads, the Obama campaign came out with two ads attacking McCain.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

I think the most unfortunate thing about this tactic is that it works. That doesn't say very good things about the American people.

Let's hope we get both candidates sticking to their strengths and the issues in the future.

Re: AASTHO: Quarter of U.S. Bridges Need Repair, at Cost of $140 Billion

pingoldsby — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:44:50 -0000

haha. 10/10 Donnie =)

Re: One Way to Market Authentic Mexican Tripe Soup

pingoldsby — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:45:13 -0000

Nothing like long chewy strips of stomach lining to get over feeling queasy!

Re: The Minimum Wage: If You Can't Scrap It, Increase It

pingoldsby — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:36:56 -0000

"Having a minimum wage may increase the opportunity cost of going to school at a young age. The fact that high school dropout rates have been so high in recent years may be a partly due to the existance of a minimum wage. There is some empirical evidence supporting this theory (like in this paper). If artificially high wages for high schoolers is giving them incentive to foresake investment in their own human capital, then I am in favor of abandoning the minimum wage for other policies that could help those at the low end of the pay scale."

This is an interesting point. If I'm reading this correctly you're basically saying that minimum wage could be a factor in a lot of high schooler's decisions to drop out. Because the minimum wage exists, what wage will they get without a high school diploma? Minimum wage. What will they get if they graduate? You guessed it, minimum wage. If you don't feel like higher education is even a possibility for you (which is very true in less privileged communities) then why finish high school?

I'd also like to comment in reply to your Denmark points. I think the main thing to consider is how small and relatively lacking in ethnic diversity Denmark is. Denmark has roughly 1/7th the population of California (5,475,791 in Denmark, 36,553,215 in California) and over 90% of them are considered "Danes" ethnically (there are 4,963,806 "Danes" out of the 5,475,791 people that live in Denmark). I couldn't find statistics showing what the remaining 10% were ethnically but we can probably assume a significant proportion of the remaining 10% are also white.

Now, should this matter ideally? No. Does it matter realistically? It sure does. Free healthcare, free job training, free education, and free child care all come at the price of incredibly high taxes. When you pay high taxes, you need to have faith in both the government's ability to use that money, and your fellow citizens ability to efficiently use the programs being given out. Highly populated, ethnically diverse groups tend to lack faith their fellow citizens will use government programs in a fair manner, due to dramatically different lifestyles. Those in favor of low taxes for the rich seem to genuinely feel that poor people "are just lazy." So why would these people want to give out "government freebies" to lazy people?

I've always believed that the Republican ideal of giving power to the states could ultimately allow for our most ideal country. It's easier to pay taxes knowing you're helping your community than helping fund a program or war in a place you've never been. The problem is, this ideal has been tainted and used as a way to simply not help others. People want power in the hands of the States not to help each other, but so they don't have to help the rest of the country. If we could somehow increase our faith for one another as Americans, I think we could realize your idea of increased social programs and a removal of the minimum wage.

Re: Best Sentence I've Read All Day

pingoldsby — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:57:22 -0000

Let's see here...
<goes to="" google="" search="">
define:extol
define:denigrate

Ahhh, yes, very nice sentence!

Re: Gloomy News

pingoldsby — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:39:50 -0000

You may be in the works of writing it, but what do you think about the government bail out of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac?

Re: On Defining "Racism"

pingoldsby — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:45:49 -0000

Adding a specific race into the definition of racism seems like it would only support racist thought. The goal should be equality. That being said, just saying we should "treat everyone the same" probably won't work, since we are obviously starting on unequal footing--specifically a nation where whites tend to hold most positions of power. This brings up such laws such as affirmative action, which by their very nature are discriminatory. Even though affirmative action doesn't work perfectly, I like the intent: to try and level the playing field by giving preferential treatment to those minorities that aren't born into it.

I still don't like the racist precedent of adding specific races into the definition of racism, however. I think it would ultimately be a step backwards. We have a lot of steps to go, and hopefully we can jump up a few flights come January 20th, 2009 as we get ready to inaugurate America's first black president.

Re: Starbucks is Scaling Back

pingoldsby — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:40:14 -0000

It's almost as if Starbucks pervasive opening of stores was used as an advertising campaign. Instead of slow steady growth, they literally opened so many stores that nobody could ignore them. The quote from "Best in Show" illustrates how common the location of Starbuck's stores is talked about: "We met at Starbucks. Not at the same Starbucks but we saw each other at different Starbucks across the street from each other."

I wonder how effective of an advertising tool this was? Perhaps it justified the risk of their growth?

Re: PerotCharts.com

pingoldsby — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:53:39 -0000

I saw this on CNN.com right before you posted it here. I just watched the entire presentation and have two reactions:

1) It was very well done.
2) It's freakin scary

One thing that I started thinking about was how we treat our seniors. Not necessarily how our government treats them, but how American culture and society treats them as well. In so many countries elders are respected, and end up living and being cared for by their families once they get old. For some reason in America we tend to push them into retirement homes and trust the government to care for them through medicare and social security.

One suggestion that also wasn't addressed in the presentation is increasing the retirement age. With people getting out of college and into the workforce so much later and with people living longer it makes sense to me.

Re: Hearing on Economic Effects of Drug Policy

pingoldsby — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:41:52 -0000

I'm very interested to see how this goes. Drug control/problems is something I'm very interested in, mostly because I can't seem to convince myself of the right solution at this point.

Re: Will ISPs Charge by the Byte?

pingoldsby — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:36:51 -0000

Paying by the bit makes rational sense to me: ISPs have a right to charge more to those who use more. But I think the article brings up an even bigger point: should we have privatized ISP's to begin with? The internet is now an absolute necessity for most businesses, as much or more so than physical transportation. It just seems unsettling that our entire infrastructure is now being supported by a few large companies.