The health care crisis may turn out to be more of a problem of ideology than economics.

“As a consumer, I don’t mind paying more if I’m getting more, but that’s just not the case in the U.S.,” said Professor Anderson, who publishes an annual review comparing the American health care system with those of its peers.

The American system, based on multiple insurers, builds in more unnecessary costs. Duplicate processing of claims, large numbers of insurance products, complicated bill-paying systems and high marketing costs add up to huge administrative expenses.

Health Care Problem? Check the American Psyche
By ANNA BERNASEK

WHAT is the most pressing problem facing the economy? A good case can be made for the developing health care crisis. Soaring costs, growing ranks of uninsured and a steady erosion of corporate health benefits add up to a giant drag on the nation’s future prosperity.

While the outlook seems scary, it doesn’t have to be. There is a solution, proven effective for hundreds of millions of people: single-payer health insurance.

Boy just made it in under the wire.

This puts extreme sports in a whole new light...and would also explain the form of their sex fixation.

"Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women," Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.

"Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

"On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.

"In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens".

Parasite makes men dumb, women sexy
December 26, 2006 - 5:33PM

A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.

About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.

I kid you not. It's another one of those TimesSelect pieces, titled The Last Race Problem, and all I can say is, the boy done sold all the way out.

So why does segregation persist? The evidence seems clear that, in sharp contrast with the past, the major cause is that blacks generally prefer to live in neighborhoods that are at least 40 percent black. Blacks mention ethnic pride and white hostility as their main reasons for not moving to white neighborhoods. But studies like Mary Pattillo-McCoy’s ethnography of middle-class black ghettos show that the disadvantages, especially for youth, far outweigh the psychic gains.

It would be naïve to discount persisting white racism, but other minorities, like Jews, have faced a similar dilemma and opted, with good reasons, for integration. The Jewish-American experience also shows that identity and integration are not incompatible, and that when the middle class moves, others follow. If America is ever to solve the second part of DuBois’s color problem, it will be on the shoulders of the black middle class.

Saddam can't testify.

Satellite images showed the 15-km long (9-mile long) crack, then the ice floating about 1 km (0.6 miles) from the coast within about an hour, Copland said.

"You could stand at one edge and not see the other side, and for something that large to move that quickly is quite amazing," he said.

Huge ice shelf breaks free in Canada's far north
Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:38 PM ET
By Jeffrey Jones

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A chunk of ice bigger than the area of Manhattan broke from an ice shelf in Canada's far north and could wreak havoc if it starts to float westward toward oil-drilling regions and shipping lanes next summer, a researcher said on Friday.

Somalis Split as Fighting Halts and Hint of Insurgency Looms
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Dec. 29 — Anti-Ethiopia riots erupted in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, on Friday, while masked gunmen emerged for the first time on the streets, a day after Ethiopian-backed troops captured the city from Islamist forces.

Hundreds of Somalis flooded into bullet-pocked boulevards to hurl rocks at the Ethiopian soldiers, set tires on fire and shout anti-Ethiopian slogans.

“Get out of our country!” they yelled. “We hate you, Ethiopians!”

In northern Mogadishu, residents said men with scarves over their faces and assault rifles in their hands lurked on the street corners. Mogadishu has plenty of gunmen, of every age and every clan, but gunmen hiding their identity is something new and may be a sign of a developing insurgency.

Really, add a cell phone, bone conduction headphone taped to your jaw and voice dialing, you have the functional equivalent of telepathy.

"Silent" Speech Device May Aid Divers, Firefighters, Cell Phone Users
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
December 27, 2006

It's technology that lets you speak your mind—literally.

NASA scientists are developing a speech recognition system that can understand and relay words that haven't been said out loud.

The system uses electrodes attached to the throat to detect biological signals that occur as a person reads or talks to him- or herself.

Part two the excerpt from The Eisenhower Foundation's forum on poverty, inequality and race. The title of the post speaks for itself.

The Eisenhower Foundation had an excellent forum on poverty, inequality and race recently. I caught it on C-SPAN and was basically pleased.

The Foundation has the video online , parsed into nice, presenter-sized packets. I saw one in particular I thought it would be good to share; I thought it would be good to watch while holding both What Black Men Think (with the goddamn autoplay music on the goddamn MySpace page) and Orlando Patterson's latest in mind. I'm using my video because I think it's of better quality. First the documentation, then the explanation.

I’m sure that many parents see these routines as healthy fun, an exercise in self-esteem harmlessly heightened by glitter makeup and teeny skirts. Our girls are bratz, not slutz, they would argue, comfortable in the existence of a distinction.

Middle School Girls Gone Wild
By LAWRENCE DOWNES

It’s hard to write this without sounding like a prig. But it’s just as hard to erase the images that planted the idea for this essay, so here goes. The scene is a middle school auditorium, where girls in teams of three or four are bopping to pop songs at a student talent show. Not bopping, actually, but doing elaborately choreographed re-creations of music videos, in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes.

Seriously. I meant to post this yesterday. It was on in the background and I decided to record it at the last minute (DVRs are cool like that...as long as the show is still in the buffer you can get the whole show). Presidential scholars can save this clip to have a convenient list of all the terms of art and rhetorical flourishes used to sucker the Flyover Folk.

Close your eyes, chant "Weapons of Mass Destruction Program Related Activities at Poison Factories" three times, then watch.

On a recent Saturday, 20 or 30 of the resident parrots swooped down and, amid much screeching, alighted on the branches of an oak tree beside a pre-World War II apartment building. Children inside the apartments gestured and called at the birds; sometimes the parrots talk back. (In captivity, monk parakeets can develop a vocabulary of about 200 words.) Parrots Have Colonized the Wilds of Brooklyn By Michael Powell Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, December 28, 2006; A02 NEW YORK -- Alex Joseph, a West Indian-born parks worker, rakes the lawn at the grandly gothic Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn when he and his fellow laborers hear what sounds like a flock of sea gulls dive-bombing at their heads. The workers instinctively duck and whip round and look up and see -- those crazy green parrots, expertly mimicking the sea gull's caw. "Man, they do that a couple times a week just to play with our minds," Joseph said, grinning wide and shaking his head. "They are a crazy bunch of immigrants, those birds." They are the wild parrots of Brooklyn, these emerald-feathered yakkers with the wisenheimer sense of humor. Thought to be long-ago escapees from a container at John F. Kennedy International Airport, their ranks replenished by unauthorized releases from pet shops, the parakeets -- originally from Argentina -- have become accomplished city dwellers. There is a parrot colony along the Hudson River cliffs in New Jersey and another bunch that prefers Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. Of late, two arrivistes have taken up residency on an apartment ledge on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But mostly these are Brooklyn parrots, content in their adopted borough of 2.5 million people.

The research paper, published in the journal Current Biology, said: "Our data show that the adjustment of individual great tits to local noise conditions is not a local phenomenon but occurs throughout Europe and probably in all noisy urban areas....Urban birds often experience very noisy conditions while singing, which may influence the efficacy of their acoustic signals. Urban-based birds 'learn to rap' Birds living in cities are performing a type of "avian rap" while their rural counterparts are sticking to more traditional sounds, a study shows. Dutch researchers found that urban species of birds sing short, fast songs rather than the slower melodies of countryside birds. City birds also sing at a higher pitch and will try out different song types. Experts said city birds have adapted to counter background noise and increase their chances of finding a mate. Varied songs The research focused on great tits in ten major European cities, including London, Paris, Amsterdam and Prague, and compared them to forest-dwellers. In every comparison city birds sang a more varied array of songs, which were short and had higher minimum frequencies. Urban tits consistently experimented with between one and five note calls, while those in forests close to the cities stuck to more normal combinations of two, three and four note tunes, the research found. The study even gives the example of one Rotterdam great tit attempting a 16-note song, possibly copied from a blue tit.

For some, Ethiopia is meddling in the affairs of its neighbor or fighting against the only leaders -- even if unofficial ones -- who have restored order to Mogadishu, Somalia's capital. To others, the Somali Islamic movement threatens to bring extremism, even terrorism, to the two countries and the entire Horn of Africa.

Despite the differences of opinion, nearly all of those who discussed the conflict expressed fear that the fighting would spread bloodshed across the Horn of Africa. And many spoke with a tone of weary fatalism, lamenting that such fighting is so routine, yet still so disappointing and that international aid to alleviate poverty and support development seems remote.

Somalis, Ethiopians Observe A Faraway War as Neighbors
Immigrants Turn Two Cafes Into Hubs of Political Discourse
By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 29, 2006; B03

As Ethiopian invaders rolled into Mogadishu yesterday, the debate in a pair of Northern Virginia coffeehouses turned on the fate of that beleaguered capital in the Horn of Africa.

Was this liberation from Islamic extremists? Or foreign intervention at its worst?

Policemen Indicted in Post-Katrina Shootings
7 New Orleans Officers Charged in Incident in Which 2 Died and 4 Were Wounded
By Michael Kunzelman
Associated Press
Friday, December 29, 2006; A09

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 28 -- Seven police officers were indicted Thursday on charges of murder or attempted murder in a shooting incident on a bridge that left two people dead during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The district attorney portrayed the officers as trigger-happy.

"We cannot allow our police officers to shoot and kill our citizens without justification like rabid dogs," District Attorney Eddie Jordan said.

Since I posted This is really pissing me off, I have noticed an inordinate number of searches for a single word: pissing.

All but one from European branches of Google, and even that one was reporting in Italian.

They pulled a two year old op-ed from the bottom of their files full of arguments that have been considered, disputed and dismissed...and printed it today. Makes ol' Tyler look like he hasn't been paying any attention at all.

Universal 401(k) Accounts Would Bring the Poor Into the Ownership Society
By TYLER COWEN

Of the current proposals to address income inequality, the universal 401(k) is the most likely to bring general prosperity.

The core idea is simple. The federal government creates tax-free retirement accounts for lower-income Americans, supplementing private accounts where they already exist, and matching personal contributions to those accounts. The amount of the match would depend on the income of the family and how much they save.

Texas: Panel Will Study Confederate Statues
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The president of the University of Texas at Austin, William Powers Jr., left, said he planned to form an advisory committee to study whether something should be done about the numerous campus statues honoring the Confederacy. The statues have become a topic of debate among students, professors and administrators. They include four bronze figures on the campus South Mall honoring Confederate leaders like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Mr. Powers said he planned to appoint a committee of advisers early next year, probably including faculty members and students. “The whole range of options is on the table,” he said. “A lot of students, and especially minority students, have raised concerns. And those are understandable and legitimate concerns. On the other hand, the statues have been here for a long time, and that’s something we have to take into account as well.”

You don't want to call it a tax cut, of course, but the less income you report the less you are taxed. 

New SEC Pay Rule To Benefit Executives
About-Face on How To Report Options
By David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006; D01

 

The incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee suggested it was a Christmas present for corporate executives from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But SEC Chairman Christopher Cox yesterday defended the agency's recent action to modify stock option disclosures, saying it "will provide the maximum clarity and consistency for investors."

Following referrals and such, I noticed something about the reaction to Orlando Patterson's latest effort. Everyone, with only three exceptions I can find, ducked. And I'm one of the exceptions.

That op-ed fell into three parts. The first is an introduction that invoked the difference between authenticity and sincerity that listed putative problems he asserts are related when seen through that lens (though, it seems, at no other time). The second is an attack on Implicit Association Tests using the most strident, emotionally evocative language one can muster over a data gathering technique. The language Patterson used made it clear the problem is the conclusions points toward a personal component in racial bias that individuals can take responsibility for. The third section philosophically supports the "disparate impact" test for racism

Sincerity rests in reconciling our performance of tolerance with the people we become. And what it means for us today is that the best way of living in our diverse and contentiously free society is neither to obsess about the hidden depths of our prejudices nor to deny them, but to behave as if we had none.

...though that test has been specifically repudiated in court.

Finding part one to be empty and part three to be bullshit, my own response targeted part two. Anyone who read the thing can see the was the point of the op-ed. Every other response stopped as soon as the race issue was engaged. Everyone else talks about "authenticity vs sincerity" as though that were the point of the article. And so another encoded debate becomes current, and we find a new way to talk about things without saying a damn thing, another debate we can resolve without coming anywhere near the issues that raised the question.

Bah.

The class also gets a lesson in brand management by studying how Mercedes-Benz handled a public relations crisis.

As it prepared to roll out a new subcompact in the mid-1990s, the model flipped while making a sharp turn during a routine test of whether it could avoid a sudden obstacle, such as a moose.

At first, the automaker reacted defensively. But as ridicule of the car's failure of the "moose test," Mercedes executives took action to protect their reputation and made a costly safety improvement in the car.

Mercedes then launched a public-relations blitz and tried to defuse the furor by putting plush moose toys in the new vehicles. The lesson, said Daniel Diermeier, one of the Kellogg professors, is that agents should not let "tactical excellence" get in the way of "strategic thinking" that may help the agency in the long run.

"Think of yourself as a steward of the FBI brand," he said.

The new FBI means business
As the bureau adapts to the post-9/11 world, it sends supervisors and agents to corporate management school.
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer
3:06 AM PST, December 28, 2006

EVANSTON, ILL. — At a class on leadership, a professor at Northwestern University's business school here asks his students to ponder a landmark on the Chicago skyline 10 miles south.

"Walk along the lake, and look downtown. You see the Sears Tower," Ranjay Gulati says. "Sears Roebuck & Co. owned retailing. They defined retailing."

That they no longer do, he says, shows "what happens when the world changes around you … and you don't."

Thirty senior FBI managers and executives stir at their desks.

People that sell it should get life in prison. 

Methamphetamine, an addictive stimulant, is known to increase blood pressure, constrict blood vessels and inflame or damage blood vessel walls. It has previously been linked with aortic dissections, which are tears in the walls of the aorta, the largest artery in the body. Yu notes that cocaine has effects on the body similar to those of methamphetamine, and is also linked with aortic and carotid artery dissections. This suggests tears in arteries may be an effect linked to a class of drugs rather than to a specific drug.

Strokes in Young People Could be Due to Meth
Discovery that methamphetamine and related drugs lead to tears in major arteries could change how doctors handle such cases
by Charles Q. Choi

The drug known on the streets as crystal meth could increase the risk of stroke and major tears in neck arteries, neurologists report.

On July 28, 2004, former president Gerald R. Ford sat down for an interview with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward. The interview was conducted at Ford's Beaver Creek, Colo., house; the former president agreed that his comments could be published any time after his death. Below are audio excerpts from the interview:

• LISTEN: Ford says he does not believe the United States should intervene militarily overseas unless it is directly in America's national interests.
• LISTEN: Ford says that, based on the facts as he understands them, he does not think that he would have ordered the Iraq war if he had been president.
• LISTEN: Ford says he believes that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld erred in justifying the Iraq war as one aimed at eliminating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
• LISTEN: Ford says that while he never publicly criticized the Bush administration's war in Iraq, he does think they made a mistake in how they justified the war.
• Read the text of all four audio excerpts.

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006; A01

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

This morning we saw how we've exploited Africa for oil. Prof. Joseph E Stiglitz of Columbia University shows how the pharmaceutical industry has done the same thing.

In 1995 the Uruguay round trade negotiations concluded in the establishment of the World Trade Organization, which imposed US style intellectual property rights around the world. These rights were intended to reduce access to generic medicines and they succeeded. As generic medicines cost a fraction of their brand name counterparts, billions could no longer afford the drugs they needed. For example, a year's treatment with a generic cocktail of AIDS drugs might cost $130 (£65; 170) compared with $10 000 for the brand name version. Billions of people living on $2-3 a day cannot afford $10 000, though they might be able to scrape together enough for the generic drugs. And matters are getting worse. New drug regimens recommended by the World Health Organization and second line defences that need to be used as resistance to standard treatments develops can cost much more.

Barring self-declared fiction, this is the most incorrect thing I've seen in print in quite a while.

What matters is not whether people believe in God but what text, if any, they believe to be divine.

I'd like to think your actions have bearing. But you People of the Word, you people who think words define rather than indicate, you're going to hell over the things you've been manipulated into doing and supporting anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter.

The Identity Christian movement believes in the divinity of the Torah...

By the 1960s, a new group of Christian Identity leaders had emerged. In the ensuing decades, they would spread Identity throughout the far right. Most prominent among them were California disciples of Wesley Swift: James K. Warner, William Potter Gale and Richard Butler. Warner (1939-), who moved to Louisiana and became active in the segregationist struggle against civil rights, was the head of the Christian Defense League and the New Christian Crusade Church. Gale (1917-1988) was an early leader in the Christian Defense League as well as its paramilitary arm, the California Rangers. In the 1970s he founded the Posse Comitatus (the group that helped spawn the sovereign citizen movement), while in the 1980s he created the Committee of the States and served as the "chief of staff" of its "unorganized militia." Most famous of all, Butler (1918-) moved Swift's Church of Jesus Christ Christian to northern Idaho in 1974, where he recast it as the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations.

Christian Identity penetrated most of the major extreme-right movements. Thanks to Aryan Nations, some neo-Nazis became believers. Klan leaders such as Thomas Robb and Louis Beam adopted the faith, as did some racist skinheads, such as the Hammerskins. Christian Identity also found a welcome home in extreme anti-government activism, notably the tax protest movement, the sovereign citizen movement (descended from Gale's Posse Comitatus) and the militia movement. The resurgence of right-wing extremism in the 1990s following the Ruby Ridge and Waco standoffs further spread Identity beliefs.

The influence of Identity often extends beyond Identity circles. The Militia of Montana, which helped create the militia movement, is headed by Identity adherents, though they do not promote the theology. Similarly, one of the most popular anti-government magazines, Media Bypass, was recently purchased by the Identity journalists Chris Temple and Paul Hall, Jr., who have so far only rarely injected Identity messages into the magazine's anti-government, conspiratorial contents.

Sounds like the kind of folks Prager would be very comfortable with. 

The Culture War Is About the Authority of a Book
by Dennis Prager
Posted Dec 27, 2006

In a recent online conversation, a guy said to me

There is no one, simple, answer to all the things that plague blacks. But most white people are sure that racism is just one of them, and not the greatest of them.

If you, as a black person, cannot concede (stipulate to?) that, then there is actually nothing to discuss.

You can imagine after my response the gentleman decided there's nothing to discuss. And it's not like I was rude, either. I just recognize how humans work; anything you yield before entering a discussion you never get back. And there's one whole hell of a lot of...how did Prof. Patterson put it...tacit agreements in that statement. The next argument would be, “you should deal with your most important problems before you ask me to look at racism as a possible obstacle to you.”

Drug Plan Companies Failed to Tell of Changes
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 — Some prescription drug plans did not inform Medicare beneficiaries of impending changes in their costs and benefits, as they were required to do, Bush administration officials and Congressional aides said Tuesday.

This could be a serious omission in a program where beneficiaries need accurate information to choose among dozens of competing private plans.

Administration officials have told Congress that they may give these beneficiaries a six-week extension of the open-enrollment period, which ends Sunday. Beneficiaries could use the extra time to compare the options that will be available to them in 2007.

Backwoods Celebrity Faces Long Prison Term for Incest
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 27, 2006; A02

Robert Hale, a Bible-toting father of 15 who calls himself Papa Pilgrim, became an anti-government celebrity in Alaska by driving a bulldozer across a national park that encircles his land.

The Lord told him that using the bulldozer to clear 14 miles of derelict road through the park was a loving thing to do, Hale said in an interview three years ago.

"In order for me to love my children, I have to be a provider," Hale said then, explaining that he needed the bulldozer to fetch supplies for his children, whom he and his wife were home-schooling in an ultra-strict Christian way.

The Curse of Oil
John Ghazvinian

“So what is it that’s taking you over there, anyway?” the operator asked while we were waiting for one of her screens to come up. “Business or pleasure?”

“Business, I suppose,” I said. “I’m doing some research.”

“Oh yeah? What about?”

“Well, about oil. Oil in Africa.”

“They got oil in Africa?”

“Oh, yes, there’s quite a lot of it, and we’re starting to get more and more of our oil from over there.” I was just getting warmed up. “In fact, Nigeria has been—”

“Good!” she said, with a burst of indignation. “We have to get it from somewhere.”

Pipeline explosion kills at least 200

LAGOS, Nigeria (CNN) -- At least 200 people were killed outside Lagos, Nigeria, in a massive explosion and fire that ignited as crowds carried away buckets of refined fuel from a tapped fuel pipeline, the Nigerian Red Cross said.

Extreme heat has prevented rescue workers from recovering bodies, and they fear the death toll could rise significantly.

At least 60 others were injured with burns, Nigerian Red Cross Secretary General Abiodun Orebiyi said.

"The explosion happened in a densely populated area, and that is why we're having these high casualty figures," Orebiyi added. (Watch how the pipeline incinerated buildings around the site)