All the stuff I said about holiday gift-giving way back in 2003 is still true. If you are really at a loss for what people really want this holiday season, the good professor has some ideas for you.
Only one closing thought for you, remember Burma and the “missing” monks.
Have a great weekend!
“What? Don’t be silly, you can’t play a movie,” you may say.
The next generation of video games is here, now. And yes, it’s like playing a movie, with you playing the major characters.
Last Tuesday, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out. It was widely expected to be one of the hot titles of the season, and I bought it opening day. G4’s X-Play gives it 5 stars out of 5.
I finished the game — well, the single player portion of the game — last night, and can say X-Play is understating when they say it “follows a US Marine and a British SAS soldier through a series of increasingly complex and escalating events in the Eastern Hemisphere.” I found it to be a totally immersive experience, better than many action movies. The game is rated M for good reason; definitely not for the kids!
If you play this game, you will find yourself on a variety of missions wherein you attempt to get off a sinking ship, rescue fellow soldiers, try to capture a foreign leader, attempt to escape a nuclear blast, skulk around the ruins of Chernobyl, snipe, blast, shoot, blow things up, watch people die, and find yourself in a chase scene that puts Mission Impossible’s Chunnel scene to shame. Oh yeah, and you get to save the world too — just in the line of duty. The ending was very unexpected; it came quickly but was satisfying (and there’s a bonus mission after the credits, so don’t quit just yet).
So tonight, I will be getting into the multi-player part of the game, taking a little time off from Battlefield 2, which by the way is probably the game Mr. Bush was playing with the troops. It’s the only game we can think of around here that allows players to “shoot the bad guys” in the Middle East and “simulate riding in a car or boat.” I just don’t know that I’d call a 2 year old game “cutting edge virtual reality games”.
In closing: Samsung pulls out of Japanese consumer electronics market; Mr. Armitage admits it was “foolish” to out Valerie Plame; the myth of the ticking bomb; are homeowners “too big to fail”?; thanks to Mr. Krugman for pointing us to this report on health care expenditures; Expert Ezra actually takes some time to “partially” defend employer-based health insurance; and too cute for Cute Overload, it’s the Weirdest Mothers in the Animal Kingdom. Well worth reading is this piece from Pandagon about those who think the family can be “strengthened” by making it harder to get divorced. Agreed that divorce is not a good thing, and not fun for anybody involved, but that’s not the answer. You don’t solve this problem by making it harder any more than you “cure” tuberculosis with cough medicine; it may stop the coughing but you’re still dying and contagious. If you want stronger families and fewer divorces, make it harder to get married, and provide more opportunities for counseling people before a marriage hits the rocks.
Last week, in a town called Otsu, a woman dropped her 10 month old baby boy out a 6th floor apartment window.
For the moment, let us assume that people who are perfectly sane do not go tossing babies out of apartment windows. Allow me to furthermore point out that mental illness effects the way people think; this should be obvious, but nobody is able to “just snap out of it” or “get a hold of yourself” when it comes to mental illness. Someone who is mentally ill might not even be able to tell they are not thinking rationally.
But why do I care about one baby boy and one mentally ill mom on the other side of the world? Why should you care?
Today is the Blog Day for The MOTHERS Act, the first event in an active targeted campaign by BlogHer to improve maternal health around the world. The MOTHERS Act stands for “Moms Opportunity to Access Help, Education, Research and Support for Postpartum Depression Act.” You can find out more about postpartum depression and its more serious form, postpartum psychosis from the nice folks at the Department of Health and Human Services. Here’s more:
Bottom line: Of the more than 800,000 women annually who are affected by post-partum emotional and mental issues, a mere 15% get treatment. The MOTHERS Act aims to change this by requiring screening of women who have given birth.
Before anybody goes off about how this is going to cost money, the type of “screening” we are talking about involves a few questions asked by a discharge nurse. These questions could result in someone getting treatment they desperately need; these questions could save a baby’s life.
Mahablog has a very nice post on this issue, including some insight through the voice of experience and a list of Congressmen to call.
Update 5/10/2012: I was contacted by a licensed social worker to inform me of a dead link (now corrected). She also gave me this great source on drug and alcohol abuse in women.
No, not talking about housing prices.
Compare and contrast: Peter Gabriel’s $250,000 “The Shed” is a 240 square foot state of the art recording studio you can have drop-shipped to you; or MC Lars’s “Post-punk laptop rap,” done in a “studio” that probably cost less than $5,000 and can fit in a sufficiently large notebook bag. Maybe Peter Gabriel is more successful, more creative. But I bet he’s not 50 times as creative, and 50 times more successful over the long term remains to be seen.
If you want to know some of my thoughts on Asia, be sure to check out my latest item over at Central Sanity. Otherwise, in closing: 54 random thoughts from Digital Penguin; Farmers want to grow a proven, useful crop but the Feds won’t let them because it might be mistaken for drugs; best item to date on the biggest problem facing American families that we don’t talk about; and the item I originally intended to rant about, on any typical day thousands of American teenagers are drinking, smoking, doing drugs. I notice they specifically did not mention having sex, being involved in a gang, or any other ways they could be getting into trouble. Well gee, people, maybe if the high school didn’t dismiss before 2 PM they wouldn’t have time for drugs! I hate being the voice of reason on this. I encourage everyone to send this article to the local school board, along with an article about how teenager’s brains aren’t awake at 7:30 AM. Reasonable high school hours == instant achievement + reduced trouble. It’s a good thing.
President Bush has appointed someone to “oversee $283 million in annual grants to provide low-income families and others with contraceptive services, counseling and preventive screenings.” The problem is that the person he has appointed “applauded a Bush proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad range of birth control”, saying that “fertility is not a disease”. You can read more about her rather outlandish views here.
Now, let me make sure I understand this. The person in charge of seeing to it that low-income families are able to control the size of their families — a critical factor in escaping poverty — has a history of being opposed to contraceptives? What?
Here’s the deal, folks. Contraceptives prevent abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancies. Frankly, I have no idea where to begin discussing this woman’s views because there is no hope of common ground. The idea that someone with views so out of touch with mainstream America — where 2/3 of all people think we should have access to contraceptives, over half think our insurance companies should pay for it, and 95% of women will use contraceptives in their lifetimes — could be put in such a role boggles my mind.
In closing: sometimes old recipes are the best recipes; Fox Business News, insulting your intelligence and playing dirty; haw haw haw panic, naw he’s only kiddin; and 10 questions for umpteen candidates.
I was not the only person looking at the newly released poverty and health care numbers yesterday. A number of labor activists are using it as ammunition in their activities, people are specifically discussing it in the context of Labor Day, although some cynically say that by the time Tuesday arrives, nobody will care until next August.
Before we begin, today’s economic figures show the American economy grew at an annualized rate of 4% in the second quarter — a pretty good number that exceeded expectations, particularly when you consider the housing sector. Speaking of which, BondDad says that won’t last. Nevertheless, new jobless claims “rose unexpectedly.”
For a very dry but extremely well informed commentary, look no further than the Economic Policy Institute. In fact, they found the figures so interesting and important that they followed up their original comments with “Economy’s Gains Fail to Reach Most Workers’ Paychecks” — the short version is in bullet-points near the beginning for those of you who use economic treatises instead of Ambien. These guys make a living looking at figures like this ([deity] bless them!) and then deciding what impact they will have going forward. Maybe that’s why everybody and their dog is quoting them.
Ezra Klein offers us only a single paragraph, but linked to two more lengthy essays. I must admit a little surprise that Mr, Klein did not focus on the health care aspects of the figures released, but there you are. If I may condense Mr. Klein’s brief missive to a single sentence: How bad poverty is in this country depends entirely how low one sets the “poverty line,” and that number is largely arbitrary.
By way of transition, I offer commentary from Alternet, where staff writer Heather Boushey reminds us that the ability to pay for health care is integral to the issue (Yes, Mr. President, we could all go to the emergency room for routine medical care, but that doesn’t change the fact that we can’t afford it). She points out that over 15% of Americans do not have health insurance at all — employer provided, privately purchased, or government subsidized — a record level. That works out to a little more than one out of every 7 people. If you honestly think a flu pandemic or any kind of epidemic is possible, this number should scare the mucus out of you. Don’t forget to look at the chart on page two, particularly the downward-sloping line representing employer-provided coverage. Given that line, it is easy to see why some politicians think requiring most businesses to provide coverage would fix the problem. However, that does nothing to fix the underlying problem that coverage is too expensive in the first place.
Focusing further on the health care issues, we begin with John Sweeney, who believes “In America, No One Should Go Without Health Care”. And he is right. But remember, by and large the problem is not health care, but the ability to pay for it. He tells us “The annual premium cost for a family health plan has close to doubled since 2000, from $6,351 to an astonishing $11,480. Soaring health coverage costs are crippling U.S. companies’ ability to compete internationally….” Almost $1000 per month, just for insurance! Not including co-payments! Certainly not including deductibles! Do you realize that before the recent minimum wage hike, an employer could easily have spent more money insuring an employee than it paid him in wages? Gee, do you think that might be impacting job creation?
Robert Stein has an item up at The Moderate Voice pointing out what I have been telling you for a few years now, that lack of health insurance is part of a middle class health crisis. And to finish the topic, Eliot Spitzer is threatening to sue the Bush Administration over the new SCHIP rules and zero-interest health care loans. Now, I am more familiar than most people with these loans — I used to work in an office that accepted them. They are normally used for elective procedures that are not covered by insurance: plastic surgery; laser hair removal; vision correction surgery. On one hand, “The room for expansion looks ample, as rising deductibles, co-payments and other costs may force more of the nation’s 250 million people with health insurance to finance out-of-pocket expenses for even basic medical care,” but on the other hand “The zero-interest plans are not for everyone. In fact, they are available only to the creditworthy — meaning they offer no help to those among the nation’s 47 million uninsured who are in difficult financial situations.”
In closing: I was going to say something about Katrina, but JurassicPork said it all; Terrorism and Democrats; when FDR said that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he meant at least in part that the first step in handling any terrifying situation is keeping your wits about you; finishing a little terror trio, interesting “facts” about Bruce Schneier (don’t know who that is? he’s a security expert and author of Beyond Fear; and finally, a little problem with farm subsidies.
Well, it’s the end of August, and that means it’s time to consider the latest statistics for poverty in the United States. For the first time since the beginning of the Bush Administration, poverty is down compared to last year. However, if you counted up the number of times words like “but” or “however” were used in the article, you might come away wondering if that was worth mentioning. There are not actually fewer people living in poverty, just a lower percentage of Americans living in poverty; in other words, the poor are still poor and there are just as many of them as last year, it’s just that there are more Americans total. Furthermore, the percentage is still over 12% (just short of one in every 8 people). Another few “howevers”: both the number and percentage of Americans without health insurance is up to record levels; today’s numbers reflect conditions from a year ago, long before most people suspected a mortgage meltdown was on the horizon; and 29 states had median incomes below the national median.
The Washington Post has another round of “buts” and “howevers” to add, charitably calling the report a “mixed picture”. On the first page alone they note that “Although median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose for the second straight year, it has not reached the pre-recession high of 1999,” that increased houshold earnings weren’t because of higher wages — wages dropped by 1% — but rather because more people in the house were working (although apparently the Heritage Foundation chose to overlook that point), that the poorest families had the highest percentage gain (a fifty cent an hour raise is a lot bigger percentage of $6 than of $12), that income inequality is even bigger than last year, that the group for whom poverty decreased was the elderly, and that we still have higher poverty rates than we did during the last recession. Not before, during the recession.
On page 2 of the article, they tackle the health insurance side of the numbers. They do not point out the obvious, that there are more people without insurance than people in poverty — and people living in poverty qualify for insurance programs like Medicaid — which means lack of the ability to pay for medical care is now a huge problem in the middle class. The number and percentage of kids without health insurance grew for the second year in a row to 11.7%. That means pretty much every classroom in our nation has at least a couple uninsured kids on average. On a related note, I’d like to throw in Krugman on the dreaded socialism of schools and health care and The Glittering Eye’s rebuttal (ht to Pete Abel, who highlighted the story in his Center of Attention the other day). Even worse, fewer than 60% of people have employer-provided health insurance at all. This is the most important reason why I feel employer-based insurance is not the answer to our current health insurance crisis, and support at the very minimum a MediKids program, if not full-on Medicare For All.
In the end, these numbers must mean something real, or certain conservatives wouldn’t be arguing things like “but the poor are so much better off now!” with a straight face.
In closing: I’ve been meaning to talk about food and fat for a while, but there’s always something else to talk about, so here’s National obesity rates continue to rise and you can’t blame that on how BMI is calculated, you do have to eat to get flatter abs, diet might be the key to reducing violence, treating mental illness, and raising kids test scores, and so-called convenience foods often don’t save time; yes, Virginia, there are things the government does better than private industry; “The attempt to redefine woman-controlled contraception as “abortion” speaks volumes about both the anti-choice agenda (ban all female control over reproduction) and their understanding that their actual goals are so far to the right that they can’t be spoken out loud.”; this won’t help most of us, but here’s an item on how to fly a private jet for less; and finally, immigration raid on chicken processing plant. Interesting that they went after a relatively small player in the poultry game. Has Tyson cleaned up its act, or is this a political favor?
Cross-posted at Central Sanity.
Part One: What, Me Worry?
The New York Times was kind enough to publish a little item called “A Question Recurs: How Safe Is Las Vegas?”
Please remember, I am one of the 1.5 million people who live in the Las Vegas Valley, and that Las Vegas itself is one of the 50 largest cities in the United States, and 5000 people move here every month. This is before you account for the fact that 16 of the 20 largest hotels in the world are in Las Vegas and that 38.9 million people visited town last year.
Reading the article, I could not decide whether the NYT was saying “eek beware stay away” or “hey, they have things under control.” You wouldn’t know it to watch reruns of CSI on Spike, but there have really only been two recent incidents that have broken into the national news seen: a lone nutcase who opened fire before being taken down by off-duty military tourists, and a hit that happened to involve a bomb on the victim’s car. A former sheriff, who now runs security for one of the casino groups, says:
“We have not had an event here in Las Vegas the equivalent of the events of 9/11 or anything close to that, and that hasn’t been by accident…. With all that said, it’s going to be very, very, very difficult to prevent lone criminals who have the intentions of harming themselves and others.”
Translation: it’s really hard to stop one nut.
Look, folks, I am not worried about terraists attacking here. First, every casino has cameras everywhere (remember? “part of me knows what you’re thinking”?) — and there’s even casinos in grocery stores. There’s also security everywhere, and they have been trained to make sure that the city’s guests have a good and safe time. There are other factors I won’t trouble you about, let me just say that the only coordinated attack that I think has any chance of success is if some truly fringe religious group is involved.
Part Two: Even Steve Liesman doesn’t like the numbers
CNBC was talking about the job creation figures for July, which were released today. CNN nicely summarizes job growth as “weaker” and points out that average hourly wages grew a whole six cents! So much for how raising the minimum wage was going to put employers in a bind. Those who would like to blame the minimum wage hike for these numbers would do well to remember that this is merely the latest in a trend of bad numbers, and that we have actually had a month with worse job creation earlier this year. TheStreet.com has some more details, but if you want the overall picture check out this chart from The Mess That Greenspan Made.
Let’s set aside the fact that 92,000 jobs were created, when we need at least 150,000 to absorb new people in the labor pool. Let’s not get bogged down in the fact that none of those people count as “unemployed” because they were never employed in the first place. And let’s only give a passing nod CNBC’s mentioning “All the July job growth came in service industries, which added 104,000 jobs while goods-producing industries cut 12,000 positions. The government shed 28,000 jobs in July, the first time in more than a year and half that the government has cut hiring.” That’s the second month in a row that “service industries” created more jobs than the headline job creation number! How long until every job requires phrases like “how can I help you”? How can we continue to call ourselves a “superpower” when each month we make less stuff, we build fewer things, and we spend more time giving one another “service” using products made somewhere else?
An hour after the figures were released, CNBC’s Chief Economist Steve Liesman asked whether the job creation numbers in the financial services industry accounted for the 7000 employees of American Home Mortgage for whom today is the last day of work. Frankly, he sounded skeptical of the numbers overall. Could it be that he’s beginning to suspect that the employment and job creation numbers are just as rigged as the inflation figures?
In closing: the things dads can teach their kids include financial literacy and lockpicking; remember me mentioning that the Canadians had sent an expedition to claim the North Pole? Well Russia sent a submarine to claim the land under the ice cap, so the Stalemate for Santa is on!; and finally, beating your wife is not a Christian value! Submitting to “authority” and having the crap beaten out of you are different things, and any man who can’t see that does not deserve to have a wife. Or, to paraphrase Karl Cullinane, “You do not say ‘my wife’ or ‘my child’ in the same way you would say ‘my shovel.'”
Today I got one of those coupon booklets in the mail. You know the sort of thing. I was flipping through it when I saw this:
Menopause, the Musical
The rest of the page informed me that someone from the local paper wrote “Dollar for dollar, it’s the best show in town.” At this point, it is worth pointing out that the next line on the page is “Free Las Vegas Hilton Buffet! See Reverse Side for Details!”
Apparently this is for real, but I bet you’ll never ever see a high school production of it.
Before I get started, I’d like to mention that I don’t bring in big bucks. In fact, to date I have not taken in a dime for this site. Now then. I have had some requests for Japan and Japanese language links. Some of these links have been posted before, nevertheless it is handy to have them in one post. You’ll find them by clicking the read more link. If this is not your cup of tea, please scroll down for something completely different. Thank you for your patience!