tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-168342742024-03-13T20:21:32.267-07:00Desert of the Real Economic AnalysisEconomic and Investment Analysis from a former Punk Rocker and Healthcare Economist. Economic analysis of international issues, domestic matters, and anything that could affect your investment portfolio in this Secular Bear Market. But there is more, lots more. From the Fed to funky 70's cinema, everything is up for trenchant comment and sophomoric smear. Funny, irreverant, often irrelevant. Welcome to the Desert of the Real!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.comBlogger583125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-76199566903084610832011-03-31T04:49:00.000-07:002011-03-31T08:54:55.396-07:00Oxidane?April Fools! It is currently April 1st in about on-half of the world. So it is TECHNICALLY true that it is April Fools Day. <br /><br />And on the subject of "technically true."<br /><br /><br />Oxidane is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry term for water. Water is also called dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) and this term is often used in these psuedoscience hoaxes.<br /><br />The purpose of this post was to demonstrate the human propensity for irrational fear when given only partial information, or information calculated to mislead. <br /><br />To try and overcome irrationality in my life, there are at least two important rules that I live by:<br /><br />If it cannot be measured, it did not happen.<br /><br />If it is not testable or observably repeatable, it cannot happen.<br /><br />Oh, and I do not care if I end a sentence with a preposition.<br /><br />Happy April 1st, somwhere in the world. And by the way, 20 years ago today I began my career in healthcare law, finance, reimbursement, policy, HIT. Nothing has been the same since, yet it has made all of the difference. I guess the joke was on me.FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-55648569298714596072010-10-29T10:55:00.001-07:002010-10-29T10:59:04.537-07:00THAT ELDRICH DAY OF ECOMOMIC MAYHEM THIS WAY COMES...NOT ELECTION DAY, HALLOWEEN!Below is a reprint of a personal favorite of the Author's from October of 2008.<br /><br />[AUTHOR'S NOTE: Where but in the Desert of the Real could the Dismal Science of Economics combine with the Hollowing Heart of Evil that Hosts that Most Horrific of Harvest Festivals?] <br /><br /><strong>HALLOWEEN ECONOMICS 201</strong><br /><br />Halloween 2007 is a fading memory, unlike the candy left in dishes and the decorations that are still to be removed from offices and homes in all corners of the nation.<br /><br />Halloween Economics 101 goes something like this. “<a href="http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2003/oct/31/halloween_scares_up/">Halloween Scares Up Business</a>”. This story in the Lawrence Kansas World-Journal informs us that Halloween is a retail mainstay in the American Economy. <br /><br />Candy and costume sales peak. Decorations of all sorts fly, crawl or lumber down retail aisles. And alcohol sales rise with the ubiquitous Halloween parties.<br /><br />And except for some Christian fundamentalists, everybody loves Halloween. Everybody, it appears, but some economists. The truth is, Halloween challenges some economic truths right down to their skeletal essence.<br /><br />Halloween, like its less macabre cousin, Christmas, is economically “inefficient”. And it reveals that the economic uber-man, the foot soldier and general of microeconomics, the flesh and bones that manipulate the invisible hand, the “Rational Economic Actor”, is as peckish as a poltergeist.<br /><br /><strong>PUTRID PROSE AND CLICHÉ ALERT. IF YOU WEREN’T SCARED OFF ALREADY.</strong><br /><br />Kevin Hassett is an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Likely a fine fellow most of the time, while in his economist trance, Hassett is both Great Pumpkin smasher and the Grinch’s meaner brother.<br /><br />Hassett’s <a href="http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25073,filter.all/pub_detail.asp">howlings</a> start like this: <br /><br /><em>Holidays are a time when Americans kick back and engage in activities that make no economic sense whatsoever. Of all the terrors lurking in the streets and alleys across the U.S. tomorrow night, the economics of Halloween may be the most horrific.</em><br /><br /><strong>EVILLY INEFFICENT IS THE HALLOWEEN HOLIDAY. </strong><br /><br /><em>Economists haven't adopted the vainglorious practice of physicists and applied numbers to their laws, but if they did, the first law of economics would be that lump-sum transfers are more economically efficient than in-kind transfers. If you are going to give a gift to somebody, you should just give them the money. They will be a better judge of the best way to spend it.</em><br /><br />This is chapter and verse of microeconomic theory. Individual actors, in best possession of their perception of needs and wants, and being best able to value goods and services to maximize the utility of their choices, make the most rational and efficient economic decisions. <br /><br />‘Twas ever thus.<br /><br /><strong>NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD-WEIGHT LOSS. </strong><br /><br />Hassett continues:<br /><br /><em>This is no laughing matter. The scale of the problem is immense. The National Confectioners Association estimates that 2005 Halloween sales were $2.1 billion, easily making Halloween the biggest candy season. This year, sales will certainly be higher.<br /><br />What percentage of those sales end up providing candy that individuals don't really like? If my own careful scientific study of Halloween bags is any guide, perhaps about 75 percent.<br /><br />It's not the dead that concern me about Halloween. And it is not the impact of all that sugar on the weight of our kids. No, it's the dead-weight loss, or pointless lost utility of the entire enterprise. That likely has a dollar value that exceeds $1.5 billion annually. American citizens squander more than a billion and a half dollars a year on an economically inefficient holiday.</em><br /><br /><strong>BRAIN DEAD YET?</strong><br /><br />Here’s the bat’s-eve view: Hassett, in the quote above, describes Halloween as an enterprise. In other words, think of Halloween as a gigantic wealth transfer mechanism. Preening and wretchedly wistful adults transfer many millions of dollars (in bite-sized increments) to marauding and mooching children. <br /><br />But the kids would rather have money, computer gaming gift certificates, or text-messaging credits. As they say in the Mafia and on the middle-school playground, “cash makes no enemies.”<br /><br /><strong>A PHANTASMIGORIC FIX OR A FUTILE FANTASY?</strong>?<br /><br />Hassett proposes an economic solution, a pumkintudious “patch”, if you will.<br /><br /><em>Many schools prohibit children from taking Halloween candy onto the premises. That is exactly the wrong policy. Schools should encourage all children to bring their entire haul to school, and allow them a lengthy period to trade candies among themselves. That way, the Take 5s and the 100 Grand bars will find their way to individuals who cherish them.</em><br /><br />And if that doesn’t work, he raises the foreboding specter of the brutish hand of the ghouls of government.<br /><br /><em>A final measure would be to take on inefficient candy-giving at the source. As a conservative, I usually oppose heavy-handed regulation, but in this case, the stakes are too high. Perhaps confectioners should be required to only sell their Halloween candy in bags that mix many different types. That way, when families put the candy out for the trick-or-treaters, bowls will be filled with a wide variety of different types of candy, and each new child will be able to pick the confection that suits his or her fancy.</em><br /><br /><strong>HMM. FEDERAL FIAT PROMOTING GREATER CHOICE AND MORE EFFICIENT ECONOMIC EXCHANGES? SOMEWHERE IN THERE COULD BE A HORRIBLY HEALTHY HEALTHCARE FINANCING SOLUTION.<br /><br />WE APPEAR TO HAVE TOO MUCH TIME TODAY IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL! </strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-8841091191970921282010-10-29T10:47:00.000-07:002010-10-29T10:50:20.371-07:00Repost from 9.20.2008. How Soon We Forget How Low it Got, and How it Got There.THOUGHTS AT THE TIME OF THE MARKET MELTDOWN<br /><br />All week the Author has been asking the question: "What crashed the financial markets so fast. "Through which gate did the Vandals enter?” <br /><br />The financial decline has been festering for a long time. Real estate reeling, mortgages in meltdown. Liquidity lacking. But what changed so quickly and so ominously?<br /><br />Or what, as the New York Times article “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/washington/19cnd-cong.html?scp=1&sq=congressional%20leaders%20stunned&st=cse">Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings</a>,“ spooked the Senators speechless? <br /><br />From the NYT article of today (9.20.2008):<br /><br /><em>It was a room full of people who rarely hold their tongues. But as the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, laid out the potentially devastating ramifications of the financial crisis before congressional leaders on Thursday night, there was a stunned silence at first. <br /><br />Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had made an urgent and unusual evening visit to Capitol Hill, and they were gathered around a conference table in the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.<br /><br />“When you listened to him describe it you gulped," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.<br /><br />As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”</em><br /><br /><strong>TO QUOTE FRED WILLIARD, “WHA’ HAPPENED?”</strong><br /><br />John Mauldin publishes several investment newsletters. In September 19th’s Newsletter entitled “<a href="http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/gateway.asp">Betting on Financial Armageddon</a>”, Mauldin swings the spotlight onto the padlocked commercial paper market. (Commercial paper is a short-term unsecured promissory note that large institutions use to borrow and lend cash to other institutions.)<br /><br /><em>Want to see in graph form how bad it got and what spooked Paulson, Bernanke and company to act so quickly? Look at these graphs from my friends at Casey Research. 30day commercial paper went to 5% from 3% a week ago. The market was literally freezing. And the amount of paper issued is in free fall. Commercial paper is the life blood of the financial and business world. Without it commerce will soon grind to a halt.</em><br /><br />Two charts posted above this article demonstrate the precipitous decline in the commercial paper market. <br /><br />The Congressional leaders quoted in the New York Times above make similar reference to a strangling credit market:<br /><br /><em>Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, they said the two men described the financial system as effectively bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.<br /><br />“You have the credit lines in America, which are the lifeblood of the economy, frozen.” Mr. Schumer said. “That hasn’t happened before. It’s a brave new world. You are in uncharted territory, but the one thing you do know is you can’t leave them frozen or the economy will just head south at a rapid rate.”</em><br /><br /><strong>GOLDEN PARACHUTING INTO THE ABYSS</strong><br /><br />Currently, and over the next few days, the Congress and the outgoing administration will be negotiating over the terms of a financial “rescue” plan that has an undetermined chance of indeterminate success over an undefined time frame. <br /><br />As the damage appears and the plan develops, the Author will continue to post, analyze, and prognosticate. <br /><br /><strong>WE HOPED THAT IT WOULD NOT HAVE COME TO THIS IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL</strong>!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-20761729248668291902009-08-27T11:58:00.000-07:002009-08-27T12:03:49.138-07:00Dave "Rocket" Shearer 1958-1979Rocket was my friend and neighbor that died of suffocation on August 28, 1979. The image of Rocket dead on the floor of his bedroom is seared into my memory. It is the last indelible mark left by a remarkable young man.<br /><br />Rocket was a strong kid and developing into a gentle man. The root words of gentleman. He was a friend to many and as good a guy as I have ever known.<br /><br />Thirty years have passed since the death of Rocket. Years that are lesser for his absence.<br /><br />Go in Peace, Bro.<br /><br />SORROW AND REGRET IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-18699118756915392642009-07-29T12:42:00.000-07:002009-07-29T12:46:22.649-07:00IS THS UNITED STATES ALL THAT MUCH DIFFERENT FROM A TOTALITARIAN STATE?Matt Taibbi writes in <a href="http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/07/28/the-health-care-bill-dies/">Taibblog</a> that the US government is in the business of pandering to well-heeled insurance industry (and healthcare providers) while providing the illusion of “doing something” to address a national emergency. <br /><br />Taibbi writes:<br /><br /><em>Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing. Personally, I think they’re doing a lousy job even of that.</em><br /><br /><strong>HEALTHCARE ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS ARE LITTLE MORE THAN A “SKIM.”</strong><br /><br />Health insurance is not rocket science. An insurer estimates what the medical expenses will be (the losses), leaves a reserve to cover extraordinary losses, and then prices in administrative costs to administer the benefits. These administrative costs include marketing costs, costs to operate the plan, take in the premiums, and pay the claims. Money is also spent to determine who is covered and who is not covered. Money is also spent to deny claims that the insurer determines are not payable.<br /><br />Medicare and Medicaid do the same thing on a much larger scale. Their administrative costs are much lower than private insurers. Medicare administrative costs are approximately 3%. But even the most well run insurance companies are lucky to keep administrative costs under 10-15%. Individual and small group insurers can have administrative costs as much as 30-40%.<br /><br />This is the beauty of a single-payor plan. It drastically reduces the administrative costs and puts government in the position of monopsony purchaser of health benefits. It both reduces the cost of providing the services, and its unchecked bargaining power reduces the amount of the cost of services.<br /><br />Most serious students of healthcare reform recognize the benefits it would provide. And the health insurance industry recognizes that it would effectively put them out of business.<br /><br />And politicians recognize that they must protect their well-heeled benefactors from the voting rabble. <br /><br />In totalitarian states, the government exists to protect the ruling elite from the desires of the masses of the people. In the United States, the government exists to protect the ruling elite from voters. What, precisely, is the difference?<br /><br /><strong>WE RARELY MISS THE POINT IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-54887559848962998742009-07-22T09:13:00.000-07:002009-07-22T09:27:15.074-07:00THE LORDSBURG DOOR WILL JUST NOT STAY SHUT...Not a day or two goes by but that someone hits the Desert of the Real to read the posts about the illusive “Lordsburg Door”. (The Author and a friend went to Lordsburg in September of 2007 to look for the Lordsburg Door, or Gate, as it is also called.) The interest in this fantastical phenomenon, an alleged portal into other times and space, does not wane. In fact, anecdotal evidence of the basis of blog hits suggests that interest has been increasing over time.<br /><br />The Author has offered to meet with anyone that has knowledge of the location of the door. He recently discovered the identity of someone that knows the person that does know the location of the Door. <br /><br />He has discovered the identity of “Joanie”, the person that told the Author that the person that knows the location of the Lordsburg Door would not take the Author to see the ephemeral portal. “Joanie” says that the person with knowledge of the portal’s location will still not reveal it to the Author, or even to "Joanie".<br /><br />The Author will continue to offer to travel to the Lordsburg Door with any individual that has legitimate knowledge of its location. Further, the Author will sign a non-disclosure agreement promising not to reveal the location of the portal. The Author will write a description of the Lordsburg Door, but will not identify its location. It is the Author's hope that this entreaty will bring foreward the individual that can take the Author to the Lordsburg Door. <br /><br />This offer is renewed and still stands. If the individual will come forward and reveal the location to the Author, and take the Author and one other individual to the Lordsburg Door, the Author and his companion will agree in writing not to reveal the location of the portal. <br /><br /><strong>WE KEEP OUR WORD IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-65143260624012616642009-07-19T11:16:00.000-07:002009-07-19T11:37:16.945-07:00WHY THE US RATIONS HEALTHCARE-AND WHY WE ARE AFRAID TO ADMIT ITA common objection by critics of single-payor healthcare (and really anykind of healthcare reform in general) is that it would require the "rationing of healthcare". <br /><br />But as anyone that has spent five minutes thinking about the topic knows, the nation already rations healthcare. It rations it on the basis of the ability to pay. No pay, no care. <br /><br />This Sunday's edition of the New York Times features an article by Princeton professor and bioethicist Peter Singer entitled "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html?ref=magazine">Why we Must Ration Healthcare". </a>The article cogently sets forth the rationing that currently takes place in America and why rationing based upon cost-benefit analysis is is neccessary to allocate the scarce resource of healthcare dollars. <br /><br />QALYS REVISTED<br /><br />The Singer article describes QALYs, or Quality Adjusted Life Years and the analysis of figuring out just how much is it worth to spend on one year of additional life. The Author has written on this topic several times, most <a href="http://desertoftherealecononomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/05/has-value-of-american-qaly-gone-up-or.html">recently </a>in May of 2008. <br /><br />The Singer article is worth an intense read by all Americans, especially those that oppose single-payor healtcare reform. And it pounds down the canard that large numbers of Brits and Canadians are dissatisfied with their respective healthcare systems. Here is how Singer concludes his article.<br /><br /><em>One final comment. It is common for opponents of health care rationing to point to Canada and Britain as examples of where we might end up if we get “socialized medicine.” On a blog on Fox News earlier this year, the conservative writer John Lott wrote, “Americans should ask Canadians and Brits — people who have long suffered from rationing — how happy they are with central government decisions on eliminating ‘unnecessary’ health care.” There is no particular reason that the United States should copy the British or Canadian forms of universal coverage, rather than one of the different arrangements that have developed in other industrialized nations, some of which may be better. But as it happens, last year the Gallup organization did ask Canadians and Brits, and people in many different countries, if they have confidence in “health care or medical systems” in their country. In Canada, 73 percent answered this question affirmatively. Coincidentally, an identical percentage of Britons gave the same answer. In the United States, despite spending much more, per person, on health care, the figure was only 56 percent. </em><br /><br />IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL, UNLIKE THE UNITED STATES, WE DO NOT HAPPILY SPEND MORE MONEY ON LESS CARE THEN CALL IT THE "BEST IN THE WORLD"!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-5347533684134754782009-07-17T01:33:00.000-07:002009-07-17T01:36:49.479-07:00DRIVE-BY CHILDHOOD AND THE CLOSING OF THE “WILDERNESS”In an article from the July 16th New York Review of Books entitled “<a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22891">Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness for Childhood</a>,” Michael Chabon effectively laments the loss of the childhood spaces where kids traditionally become kids. <br /><br /><strong>CHILDHOOD FROM THE SAFETY SEAT</strong><br /><br /><em>The sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands have been abandoned in favor of a system of reservations—Chuck E. Cheese, the Jungle, the Discovery Zone: jolly internment centers mapped and planned by adults with no blank spots aside from doors marked staff only. When children roller-skate or ride their bikes, they go forth armored as for battle, and their parents typically stand nearby<br /><br />…We schedule their encounters for them, driving them to and from one another's houses so they never get a chance to discover the unexplored lands between. If they are lucky, we send them out to play in the backyard, where they can be safely fenced in and even, in extreme cases, monitored with security cameras</em>.<br /><br /><strong>THE RAVINE AND OTHER PLACES</strong><br /><br />When the Author was a kid he and his friends knew their small town, the farm fields, and the abandoned gravel pit known as “The Ravine” intimately. We walked or rode bicycles or our minibikes. We lived a self-directed life as far outside of the imperious eyes of parents and other adults as was possible.<br /><br />Skinned knees, sunburns and bug bites were the price of freedom and the explorative urges. And we did it all without anyone having there eye put out.<br /><br />We went where we wanted, played ball every afternoon, and always came home for supper. Then we went back out again until dark, or later.<br /><br />Chabon, who led a life of juvenile adventure, worries what adults might be unwittingly doing to their children’s sense of wonder and adventure. Chabon writes: <br /><br /><em>What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go. Should I send my children out to play?<br /><br />There is a small grocery store around the corner, not over two hundred yards from our front door. Can I let her ride there alone to experience the singular pleasure of buying herself an ice cream on a hot summer day and eating it on the sidewalk, alone with her thoughts? Soon after she learned to ride, we went out together after dinner, she on her bike, with me following along at a safe distance behind. What struck me at once on that lovely summer evening, as we wandered the streets of our lovely residential neighborhood at that after-dinner hour that had once represented the peak moment, the magic hour of my own childhood, was that we didn't encounter a single other child.</em><br /><br /><strong>KIDS CAN STILL BE KIDS, NOT MALL RATS, IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-61065095199740391102009-07-12T13:57:00.001-07:002009-07-12T14:08:31.712-07:00WHO IS THE AUTHOR?Every few years the Author pulls out his well-worn copies of the novels "Garden of Sand" and "Tatoo" and rereads them. He rereads them as frequently as he does "Huckelberry Finn" and "The Christmas Carol". Garden of Sand and Tatoo are as seminal to the Author as his birth certificate and his passport.<br /><br />These novels were written by Earl Thompson, a Kansas writer that died woefully premature, in 1979 at the age of 47.<br /><br />As a teenager the Author read Thompson and found a voice that sounded like his own. Thompson gave the Author a simulacrum of "permission" to put down his own thoughts.<br /><br />HERE I AM, HERE I WILL BE, AND HERE I WILL FIGHT TO REMAIN.<br /><br />Thompson was quoted in an interview with Esquire magazine in 1970.<br /><br /> <em>My persisting values are those of that class which is trapped <br /> between poverty that is a personal moral failure and the lure<br /> of material reward for citizenship they can never achieve. A<br /> class that is a persistent pain in the ass to all representative<br /> societies, whatever their ism. People who are so early frightened<br /> by violence anything short of death is a personal victory. And<br /> all have been wounded.</em><br /><br />Or, as the Author had often said, people just smart enough to stay in business, but too dumb to make any money. My people, my legacy, my fate.<br /><br />The Author highly recommends these two novels. They are available on Amazon.<br /><br /><strong>Reet Sausage, from the Desert of the Real</strong>!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-6763439259171121892009-07-12T08:48:00.000-07:002009-07-12T08:51:29.751-07:00WHEN REALITY IS NOT “REAL” ENOUGHAn article in today’s New York Times entitled “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/business/12proto.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1247410803-n+dcKM/+N6XWlGyHl4SVSQ">Kicking Reality Up a Notch”</a> describes technology that overlay the real world with additional information. <br /><br /><strong>A COMMON EXAMPLE</strong><br /><br />Watch an NFL football game on television and you routinely see things that are not there. (No, the Author is not talking about Bret Favre’s integrity). No, it is the line that crosses the field that indicates where the first-down indicator is located.<br /><br /><em>The technology, developed by Sportvision and called 1st and Ten, is an early commercial example of a field of computer science called augmented reality, in which the real world is overlaid with virtual information. Once the stuff of science fiction, augmented reality is now also making its way to smartphones, thanks to advances in both hardware and software.</em><br /><br /><strong>USE YOUR CELL PHONE INSTEAD OF FODORS.</strong><br /><br /><em>People in Amsterdam who download a free application called Layar on their cellphones can look through the camera and see information about nearby restaurants, A.T.M.’s, and available jobs displayed in front of buildings that house them. This information is provided by companies like Hyves, the Dutch social networking site, and ING, the financial services company. The businesses pay a fee to SPRXmobile, the privately held company based in Amsterdam that developed Layar. <br /><br />Layar is available in the Netherlands for phones running on the Android operating system developed by Google. Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, a co-founder of SPRXmobile, says it will be marketed later this year in the United States, Germany and Britain.<br />A similar product for Android phones, called Wikitude.me, provides information on 800,000 points of interest around the world, according to Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, founder of Mobilizy, the Austrian company that developed Wikitude.me. Much of this content comes from Wikipedia, he said.</em><br /><br /><strong>TAKE TWO ASPRIN AND THE MACHINE WILL SHOW ME WHERE IT HURTS.</strong><br /><br /><em>It is predicted that healthcare would benefit from such technologies.<br />Augmented reality will “reinvent” many industries, including health care and training, Mr. Inbar predicted. Already, researchers at the Technical University of Munich are looking at ways to display X-ray and ultrasound readings directly on a patient’s body. A research project at BMW is exploring how an augmented-reality view under the hood might help auto mechanics with diagnostic and repair work. </em><br /><br />The Author is a bit resistant to such technologies. He has trouble with just plain reality, so augmented reality might be a bit flummoxing.<br /><br /><strong>REALITY IS JUST ANOTHER CONSTRUCT IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-40939123187208486532009-07-11T14:08:00.000-07:002009-07-11T14:12:37.401-07:00IT WAS 30 YEARS AGO TODAY...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8FXGRWiRqlgzfiXrS-fseFs02XudfLuIp4T7oNxSPVq8sAyJMDhUVxKikiNnzJylIzZUNFVYeGsqvxAUSo08c0dxe-x607nMYCacuHzy4J8gh-D4bkuWX1BIMvBkW7xOAXVf/s1600-h/skylab_nasa.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP8FXGRWiRqlgzfiXrS-fseFs02XudfLuIp4T7oNxSPVq8sAyJMDhUVxKikiNnzJylIzZUNFVYeGsqvxAUSo08c0dxe-x607nMYCacuHzy4J8gh-D4bkuWX1BIMvBkW7xOAXVf/s400/skylab_nasa.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357313490883671810" /></a><br />Skylab, the 1970s era space station, plummeted to earth on this day in 1979. It fell into the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.<br /><br />A friend owned an old pinball machine based on the Skylab motif.<br /><br />Skylab was built from the third stage of a Saturn V launch rocket.FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-43262110281028432632009-07-10T11:22:00.000-07:002009-07-10T11:23:40.594-07:00TELSTAR 1<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqWn_WUHBm_JyMwH_tshyphenhyphenJszY-2j_sOpOyAyFLnttMu40DmlkzgpFsshAU0KJdl3zUBoNm5Pn7dcEd5q4XJonKYsWMCu3aB_76kYHKggp-ADyNk13SUbU163T9Q0TQH1cm45Yf/s1600-h/Telstar.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 332px; height: 382px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqWn_WUHBm_JyMwH_tshyphenhyphenJszY-2j_sOpOyAyFLnttMu40DmlkzgpFsshAU0KJdl3zUBoNm5Pn7dcEd5q4XJonKYsWMCu3aB_76kYHKggp-ADyNk13SUbU163T9Q0TQH1cm45Yf/s400/Telstar.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356898856493478306" /></a>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-26058627976758519892009-07-10T11:20:00.000-07:002009-07-10T11:22:45.926-07:00HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TELSTARSatellites are now as ubiquitous as jet airliners and ocean-going tankers. Use of satellites in our daily lives is as common as watching television or finding the nearest Burger King restaurant on GPS. It was not always thus.<br /><br /><strong>IT WAS 47 YEARS AGO TODAY.</strong><br /><br />On July 10, 1962, the first communications satellite, Telstar 1, was launched by a Delta Rocket into an elliptical orbit. (Today’s communication satellites are typically launched into geosynchronous orbits.) <br /><br />Telstar relayed television signals and multiplexed telephone signals. It went out of service in February of 1963. Ironically, its service life was cut short by the explosion of a US high altitude nuclear explosion.<br /><br />Telstar 1 was replaced by Telstar 2 in May of 1963. Both satellites are still in orbit, although neither is operational.<br /><br /><strong>CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL ICON.</strong><br /><br />Telstar was a cultural icon. The British Band the Tornados recorded a song named Telstar and this song was the first by a British band to reach Number 1 on the US pop charts. (This was the pre-Beatles era).<br /><br />The song Telstar was later covered by the rock band the Ventures.<br /><br /><strong>TELSTAR IS ALSO AN ICON IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-31765709994801116192009-07-08T15:28:00.000-07:002009-07-08T15:32:00.682-07:00A POWERFUL USE FOR A COMMON SUBSTANCE.<strong>LET’S SEE IF THE AUTHOR CAN DO THIS PIECE WITHOUT PUNS OR PERFIDIOUS ALLITERATION.</strong><br /><br />A childhood crank call went something like this:<br /><br />Name three cars that start with “P”?<br /><br />(The Author will play) “Pontiac, Plymouth, Puegot.”<br /><br />“No stupid, those cars start with gas, not “P”.<br /><br />Well, perhaps not for much longer. <br /><br /><strong>URINE A “CLEAN” ENERGY SOURCE, PER AN ARTICLE IN DiscoveryNews.</strong><br /><br /><em>An article from July 8th on <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/08/urine-power.html">DiscoveryNews</a> describes how urine is a rich and potentially inexpensive source of hydrogen.<br /><br />Urine-powered cars, homes and personal electronic devices could be available in six months with new technology developed by scientists from Ohio University.<br /><br />Using a nickel-based electrode, the scientists can create large amounts of cheap hydrogen from urine that could be burned or used in fuel cells. "One cow can provide enough energy to supply hot water for 19 houses," said Gerardine Botte, a professor at Ohio University developing the technology. "Soldiers in the field could carry their own fuel."</em><br /><br />Hydrogen is a potent and carbon-free source of combustion. When hydrogen combines with oxygen, it produces water. Hydrogen combustion has been touted as a solution to both oil and global climate change concerns. But there is one problem. Hydrogen takes more energy to produce than it provides<br /><br /><strong>URINE IS HYDROGEN RICH AND MORE EASILY STRIPPED OF ITS HYDROGEN THAN WATER.</strong><br /><br />One molecule of urea, a major component of urine, contains four atoms of hydrogen bonded to two atoms of nitrogen. Stick a special nickel electrode into a pool of urine, apply an electrical current, and hydrogen gas is released.<br /><br /><em>Botte's current prototype measures 3x3x1 inch and can produce up to 500 milliwatts of power. However, Botte and her colleagues are actively trying to commercialize several larger versions of the technology.<br /><br />A fuel cell, urine-powered vehicle could theoretically travel 90 miles per gallon. A refrigerator-sized unit could produce one kilowatt of energy for about $5,000, although this price is a rough estimate, says Botte.<br /><br />And it takes less electricity to release hydrogen from urine, where it is bound to nitrogen, than it takes to separate hydrogen from oxygen, as in water. <br /><br />By attaching hydrogen to another element, nitrogen, Botte and her colleagues realized that they can store hydrogen without the exotic environmental conditions, and then release it with less electricity, 0.037 Volts instead of the 1.23 Volts needed for water</em>.<br /><br />Perhaps cheap gas may one day be replaced by profligate pee.<br /><br /><strong>STAND IN LINE AND PRODUCE IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-5388144752875801702009-05-02T08:27:00.000-07:002009-05-02T08:37:37.919-07:00TWO WHEELS OR FOUR-YOU BE THE JUDGEPopular Mechanics magazine recently <a href="http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=970197&topart=pickups">tested</a> a Ducati Hypermotard alongside the Honda Fit and graded the test on a curve. Well, a series of curves. It was quite a test.<br /><br /><strong>CHEAP THRILL OR THRIFTY ACCOMPLISHMENT?</strong><br /><br /><em>The adrenaline rush that comes from piloting a sporty car or a hot-blooded motorcycle through a series of sinuous curves is a joy every gearhead craves. It’s not all about gunning for flat-out, maximum speed. Smoothly connect each corner with the perfect combination of velocity and precision and the experience becomes more than just a cheap thrill—it’s an accomplishment.<br /><br />Such mechanized fun doesn’t have to come with a sky-high price tag or an EPA fuel-economy rating in the single digits. In fact, for less than $20,000 you can buy a vehicle that will serve as both a weekend toy and a fuel-efficient commuter. The big question is, two wheels or four? We gathered together a pair of seemingly dissimilar vehicles—a high-strung, Italian-bred Ducati Hypermotard 1100 S and a sensible, versatile Honda Fit Sport—to see how they stack up when it comes to fun, practicality and fuel efficiency. We brought them both to Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, Calif., and ran them through our usual instrumented tests. We braved many miles of Los Angeles’ famous traffic, and then, finally, we had some fun on Glendora Mountain Road, a 15-mile roller coaster of twisting, turning blacktop in Angeles National Forest. So can a sexy superbike compete with a fuel-efficient hatchback when it comes to value? Can the humble car match the bike for driving thrills? The results may surprise you.</em><br /><br /><strong>QUITE A CHALLENGE TO PICK A WINNER</strong><br /><br /><em>So, which one offers the best bang for the buck? There’s no easy answer. The Ducati and Honda are both fun, but we’d certainly crown the fire-breathing Hypermotard king of that battle. As a commuter, we’ll give the edge to the Fit. The Ducati can make better time, but the stiff seat and cramped foot-peg position mean this bike isn’t our first choice for a long-distance cruise. The Fit, on the other hand, would be comfortable enough for a cross-country Cannonball Run. The endgame comes down to fuel efficiency and price. Over our test route, the Honda returned a solid 29.8 mpg. But the high-strung, Italian-bred superbike delivered an incredible 48.9 mpg and cost about $1900 less. That’s the tipping point. Winner: Ducati.</em><br /><br /><strong>BOTH CAN PARK IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-45633549209721061402009-04-12T16:14:00.000-07:002009-04-12T16:19:10.003-07:00WHEN THE GODS FELL SILENTThere are those rare times in one’s life when a discovery of an idea or new theory opens up a new mode of thought, an almost transcendent moment of clarity. In the Author’s case, that moment was presaged many years ago. During the week of March 14th, 1977, he read a curious book review in Time Magazine, The <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947274-3,00.html">Lost Voice of the Gods</a>, by Julian Jaynes. <br /><br />It was a fascinating read for a kid that hid an intellectual kernel beneath an adolescent shell. But it was laid aside and the topic was only revisited a few times in the intervening 32 years. In February of this year the Author purchased the book “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” and is almost finished reading it. The thesis of the book remains controversial and on the fringes of accepted science. Yet the book remains in print and the ideas therein still banging around.<br /><br /><strong>THE OWNERS MANUAL FOR THE HUMAN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?</strong><br /><br />According to Jaynes, humankind did not develop consciousness minds until approximately 3,000 years ago. Prior to that time, humans could think, speak, make decisions. But the introspective inner world, the “I-space” where we spend nearly all our conscious time, did not exist. <br /><br />Rather, humans lived under the admonition and direction of the right hemisphere of the brain, voices that were deemed to be dead kings, and later, gods. “Greek Zombies” as one later author denoted bicameral man. (Bicameral is Jayne’s description of the condition where both sides of the brain were active in the auditory hallucinations.)<br /><br />The evidence for this bicameral existence comes from the literature of the second and third centuries B.C.E. According to Jaynes, there is no consciousness in the writings extant from theses eras. From the Time magazine article in 1977:<br /><br /><em>As evidence of the switch from bicamerality to conscious life, Jaynes points to the ancient classics. "There simply is no consciousness in the Iliad, except for a few later accretions," he says. "The heroes do not wonder, ponder or decide. They are pulled around by the voices of the gods. The same is true in the early books of the Bible. Abraham isn't conscious, and Amos isn't either. Consciousness comes later, with Ecclesiastes." <br /><br />In some of these later writings, Jaynes finds laments for the lost bicameral world. He notes that the Odyssey, probably coming at least 100 [1,000 is more probable] years after the Iliad, features "the wily Odysseus, the first modern hero, picking his way through a ruined and god-weakened world." In Hindu literature, the unconscious writings of the Veda give way to the subjective Upanishads, and in the Old Testament, the voices of Yahweh and prophets grow silent, replaced by subjective men wrestling with unanswered questions. <br /><br />Though subdued, the voices of the right side of the brain still occasionally break through as, for example, the voices of Joan of Arc, some drug hallucinations and schizophrenia. Psychiatrists, says Jaynes, "seem to like my theory. They are literate men, and many of them say they sense something archaic in the hallucinatory voices of schizophrenics." Jaynes also folds poetry into his theory: it arose as unconscious divine speech, its mesmerizing rhythms produced by right-sided brain impulses. </em><br /><br /><strong>EXPULSION FROM THE GARDEN OF EDEN-LOSS OF THE BICAMERAL MIND AND THE GODS THAT LIVED THEREIN? <br /><br />HUMANS WERE NOT KICKED OUT OF THE “GARDEN”, THE “GARDEN” WAS KICKED OUT OF HUMANS…</strong><br /><br />Jaynes also sees the story of the Adam and Eve’s fall as a myth describing the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Writes Jaynes on page 299:<br /><br /><em>The serpent promises that “you shall be like the [gods] themselves, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5), qualities that only subjective conscious man is capable of.</em><br /><br />Jaynes also notes that the qualities of deceit are a hallmark of consciousness, as the nonconscious bicameral humans lacked the ability to deceive. And now conscious, knowing what was gained-and what was lost-humans mourn the Fall and still seek the gods that assured them through uncounted days. And try to regain the “authority” of those voices, through oracles, divination, idols, prophecy, biblical inerrancy, and so-called “creation science”.<br /><br />Over the next weeks and perhaps months the Author will continue to read and study the Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind and will likely post on the topic.<br /><br /><strong>PROUDLY CONSCIOUS IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-90130669591285706032009-03-23T09:16:00.000-07:002009-03-23T09:22:15.312-07:00NO ONE IS IN FAVOR OF GOVERNMENT WASTE, UNLESS THE GOVERNMENT IS WASTING IT ON THEMThe title of this post is a “Feightnerism”. He came up with it when he worked for the Farmers Home Administration as a bankruptcy law clerk. He worked there one summer as a law student. He watched the government waste millions on farm loans. Of course the government was also in the business of supporting farmers through government largesse. Farmers farmed the government first, the soil second.<br /><br />Later, the Author became a healthcare lawyer and watched the farce of medical providers “condemn” the medical financing program that made them millionaires. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Medicare and Medicaid millionaires play golf in the sunbelt with the gains from government programs they looted.<br /><br />So it is with no surprise that the Author watches the bailout debacles and the feigned indignation of the current political environment. Government, in America, has always been a money pit that is gamed and looted by powerful business interests. The returns that American industries receive on campaign contributions far exceed the returns earned on actually doing business.<br /><br /><strong>AIG BONUSES FOLLOW AN AMERICAN TRADITION, SAYS CNN COMMENTARY.</strong><br /><br />A <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/23/zelizer.aig/index.html">commentary</a> on CNN.com by Julian Zelizer discusses the common US government <em>modus operandi </em>when bribing businesses to take actions that are required for the public good, or public necessity. <br /><br /><em>Traditionally, American politicians in times of crisis have resisted aggressive interventions by government into business which would tamper with managerial prerogatives and profits.<br /><br />The political value of this strategy has been clear: It helps elected officials in the White House and Congress sell federal programs in a country stubbornly resistant to many kinds of government interventions in the private sector (though often happy with the interventions after they receive the benefits). It also dampens corporate opposition to government programs in moments when such programs are urgently needed.</em><br /><br />Even war does not bring out patriotic sacrifice in the “Captains of American Industry. Zelizer goes onto quote Former Secretary of War Henry Stimson:<br /><br /><em>As FDR's Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, noted in his diary in 1940, "If you are going to try to go to war, or to prepare for war, in a capitalist country, you have to make business make money out of the process or business won't work." The outcome of this arrangement was that business retained enormous power over the production process and executives made money.<br /><br />In the 1940s, a small group of the nation's biggest corporations received the lion's share of military contracts. Wartime agencies were staffed by "dollar-a-year men" who were business executives temporarily working for the government in exchange for a small wage. According to The New Republic, however, altruism was not their primary motivation: "Concern for the war is secondary to self-interest and the jealous protection of their competitive positions."</em><br /><br /><strong>WHERE IS MY CHECK?</strong><br /><br />The Author did not find much honor in working with industries that lived off the government largesse. Partly because it was paid from the tax revenue of hard-working Americans, partly because it was a rigged game. The industries usually wrote the rules from which they earned their money.<br /><br />Zelizer offers this advice:<br /><br /><em>During the next round of negotiations, the administration and Congress might rethink their earlier approach, indeed the approach we have taken to economic intervention since the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.<br /><br />The federal government might place tighter regulations on the institutions receiving assistance (as it has with other recipients of government assistance, such as the poor) so that public support for the much needed interventions in this crisis doesn't suffer more political blows.</em><br /><br />And there is the hypocrisy. Poor recipients are abject moral failures that must be ground down to obeisance while industry (and the wealthy individuals) loot with boundless zeal, steal with abandon, and pontificate with impunity.<br /><br />IT ISN'T ALL ABOUT THE ANTS AND GRASSHOPPERS IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-37989277404688798762009-03-22T12:21:00.000-07:002009-03-22T12:24:35.300-07:00Wal-Mart to Sell Physician Medical Records SystemsAn article from a recent New York Times entitled “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/business/11record.html?_r=1&th&emc=th">Wal-Mart Plans to Market Digital Health Records System</a>” announces that Wal-Mart has teamed up with Dell and eClinicalWorks to offer healthcare information systems to small physician practices.<br /><br />Dell will provide the hardware for these small office practice systems. eClinicalWorks will provided the systems through a web-based interface. Like most Wal-Mart products, the system will come with a modest price tag, $25,000 for one physician, about $10,000 for each additional doc.<br /><br /><strong>WILL THE DOCS PONY UP?</strong><br /><br />According to the Times Article:<br /><br /><em>Only about 17 percent of the nation’s physicians are using computerized patient records, according to a government-sponsored survey published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine. The use of electronic health records is widespread in large physician groups, but three-fourths of the nation’s doctors work in small practices of 10 physicians or fewer.</em><br /><br />Wal-Mart’s distribution model may provide cost advantages that traditional software-resellers do not have. Wal-Mart, and Sam’s Club are good at marketing products to small businesses.<br /><br /><em>Wal-Mart, however, has the potential to bring not only lower costs but also an efficient distribution channel to cater to small physician groups. Traditional health technology suppliers, experts say, have tended to shun the small physician offices because it has been costly to sell to them. Taken together, they make up a large market, but they are scattered.<br /><br />“If Wal-Mart is successful, this could be a game-changer,” observed Dr. David J. Brailer, former national coordinator for health information technology in the Bush administration.</em><br /><br /><strong>GAMECHANGER? OR SAME OLD STORY?</strong><br /><br />Many physicians, especially older physicians, are simply resistant to change. It takes time and human resources to install and learn these systems. And it takes time away from productive activity. And in small offices, the human resources necessary to install these systems simply do not exist. <br /><br />Maybe we are asking the wrong question. Why, when costs for everything are up and almost all industries are consolidating, do small physician practices proliferate? Are we overpaying for medical care allowing small and inefficient practices to flourish and practice?<br /><br />Damn straight we are. Take the money and the margins out of medicine and it will revert to what it should be, a service industry with wages consistent with other professionals. <br /><br /><strong>STAY HEALTHY AND HEAL FAST IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-89843963791604535142009-03-22T09:28:00.000-07:002009-03-22T09:34:29.044-07:00Till Death, or the End of the Recession, Do Us Part.Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal has an article entitled “Split Decision: Economic Hard Times Making it Hard on Couples Trying to Divorce”. One thrust of the article is that warring couples cannot financially afford to divorce. They must remain in the same home or relationship ecause they cannot afford to move out. <br /><br />Another point of the article is couples are renegotiating support agreements and post-divorce financial arrangements because spouses cannot meet their financial obligations because of job loss or income reduction.<br /><br />The article also notes that more couples are pursuing their divorces <em>pro se</em>, or without an attorney. <br /><br /><strong>BABY WE ARE DOOMED TO SHARE THE LAND</strong><br /><br />It was only a couple of years ago that the always prescient Author posted an article about how the real estate boom of mid-decade was permitting couples to divorce and each walk out with some equity. In “<a href="http://desertoftherealecononomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/08/maybe-ill-be-there-to-share-land-until.html ">MAYBE I’LL BE THERE TO SHARE THE LAND</a>” (Until the Value goes up Enough and then it’s Splitsville) the Author quoted a New York Times Article “Buy Low, Divorce High”:<br /><br /><em>A little-noted side effect of the property boom of the past decade has been the real-estate-enabled divorce. Home values might have slid in some markets, but in the New York City region, where prices remain high, divorce professionals like therapists and lawyers, along with real estate brokers, say unhappily married couples are cashing in appreciated homes to underwrite a split. <br /><br />“The equity that there is in real estate is one of the impetuses why there are so many divorces,” said Nancy Chemtob, a Manhattan divorce lawyer, adding that the net worth of her clients has doubled in the past three years mainly thanks to real estate. The price of the average Manhattan apartment was $1.3 million as of June, up 7 percent from a year ago, according to the real estate brokers Brown Harris Stevens.</em><br /><br />The Author then opined:<br /><br /><em>Marriages are many things, but in the Author’s opinion, they nearly all function as economic “partnerships”. Love might bring people together, but money, or the lack thereof, keep couples together or rends them apart. <br /><br />Couples combine their incomes, or perhaps other skills, and their assets, into economic relationships to buy homes, rear children, operate businesses, or for other reasons. And often the “strength” or “durability” of a marriage depends on the economic state of the marriage. <br /><br />When one marriage participant is financially dependent upon the other, the financially dependant participant has little choice but to remain in the relationship despite potentially negative endogenous and exogenous non-economic factors. (The Author loves using these big economic terms). <br /><br />Contrast the foregoing relationship with one in which each marriage participant is financially independent or capable of being economically self-sustaining. These relationships are economically less “durable”. And rapid improvements in a marriage participant’s wealth or income can provide a quick exit from the relationship.</em><br /><br /><strong>BUT NOW “IT’S OH LORD, STUCK IN LODI AGAIN.”</strong><br /><br />The Author makes no value judgments on this relationship between economic conditions and familial adhesion, except to note two things. First, if it ain’t the money, then what the heck else is it? <br /><br />And the little children take the hindmost. <br /><br /><strong>NO OFFENSE MEANT TO LODI, OR ANY OTHER LOCATION, IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL! </strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-16679636515488945602009-03-20T14:15:00.000-07:002009-03-20T14:19:14.780-07:00ENNUI OR ON YOU?In past posts, the author has written about economic issues that presaged the current recession. The causes are legion. Collapse of asset values, subprime mortgage collapse, decline of manufacturing capacity, the hamstringing of the regulatory mechanism, general malaise, the failure to release the “Beavis and Butthead Christmas Special” on DVD.<br /><br />Just this week an <a href="http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/03/16/amid-18-percent-unemployment-indiana-county-finds-unity/">article</a> in the Christian Science Monitor highlighted the 18 percent unemployment in the author’s home town, Ligonier, Indiana. The article did not a resilency and community spirit among the rural denizens, however. <br /><br /><strong>CORROSION OR RUST</strong><br /><br />We need villains. We need bonuses paid to corporate looters that plunged their companies into insolvency. We need verbal gaffes from politicians that can feed the electron-gobbling fiend that is the 24-hour news cycle. And we need a mentally-ill woman with way to many kids to care for. <br /><br />(The Author does not need these diversions, but he is a misshapen misanthrope that entertains himself with this blog and trenchant cuts at what substitutes for culture.)<br /><br />Ponzi schemes point the way to a wailing plutocracy. No one will ever get even with Bernie Madoff, but their righteous indignation will whip through howls of execration. The best among us condemn the theft, the worst regret only his methods. The misanthrope only wishes he could have gotten in early and gotten out in time.<br /><br />The Author’s talked a little too long. He has written little and feels like he has said nothing. Good thing he doesn’t get paid for it. <br /><br /><strong>MISANTHROPY IS BETTER THAN LYCANTHROPY IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-70256025235918861312009-03-15T10:08:00.002-07:002009-03-15T10:28:39.914-07:00DEATH RESURRECTED. PUNK BEFORE PUNK WAS PUNKThis Sunday's New York Times contains an article about a Detroit Band from the 1970s entitled "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/arts/music/15rubi.html?_r=1&th&emc=th">Death was Punk before Punk was Punk</a>".<br /><br />The band consisted of three brothers, David, Bobby and Dannis Hackney from Detroit. They began playing R&B in Detroit in the early 1970s before moving to rock and roll in a style of the Stooges and MC5, other proto-punk bands from Detroit.<br /><br />A RESURRECTION AND A GENERATIONAL REVIVAL<br /><br />The NYT article begins:<br /><br /><em>ON an evening in late February at a club here called the Monkey House, there was a family reunion of sorts. As the band Rough Francis roared through a set of anthemic punk rock, Bobby Hackney leaned against the bar and beamed. Three of his sons — Bobby Jr., Julian and Urian — are in Rough Francis, but his smile wasn’t just about parental pride. It was about authorship too. Most of the songs Rough Francis played were written by Bobby Sr. and his brothers David and Dannis during their days in the mid-1970s as a Detroit power trio called Death.<br /><br />The group’s music has been almost completely unheard since the band stopped performing more than three decades ago. But after all the years of silence, Death’s moment has finally arrived. It comes, however, nearly a decade too late for its founder and leader, David Hackney, who died of lung cancer in 2000. “David was convinced more than any of us that we were doing something totally revolutionary,” said Bobby Sr., 52.</em><br /><br />The New York Times contains a link to one of the Death's songs, "Politicians in my eyes."<br /><br /><em>Forgotten except by the most fervent punk rock record collectors — the band’s self-released 1976 single recently traded hands for the equivalent of $800 — Death would likely have remained lost in obscurity if not for the discovery last year of a 1974 demo tape in Bobby Sr.’s attic. Released last month by Drag City Records as “... For the Whole World to See,” Death’s newly unearthed recordings reveal a remarkable missing link between the high-energy hard rock of Detroit bands like the Stooges and MC5 from the late 1960s and early ’70s and the high-velocity assault of punk from its breakthrough years of 1976 and ’77. Death’s songs “Politicians in My Eyes,” “Keep On Knocking” and “Freakin Out” are scorching blasts of feral ur-punk, making the brothers unwitting artistic kin to their punk-pioneer contemporaries the Ramones, in New York; Rocket From the Tombs, in Cleveland; and the Saints, in Brisbane, Australia. They also preceded Bad Brains, the most celebrated African-American punk band, by almost five years.</em><br /><br />Give the links a try. The music is unchallegned and feral. And a link to an enduring moment in the musical wasteland of 1970s Disco.<br /><br />AGAIN WITH THE OLD SCHOOL IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-34546066770450280632009-03-15T10:08:00.001-07:002009-03-15T10:08:59.767-07:00DEATH RESURRECTED. PUNK BEFORE PUNK WAS PUNKFOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-47556641094373265522009-03-12T09:30:00.000-07:002009-03-12T09:32:37.784-07:00AMERICAN HEALTHCARE FINANCING-THE FINAL SOLUTIONThis is a repost of a peice from december 2007. It is again timely as our government debates healthcare reform,<br /><br />[AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a post the Author never expected write. For nearly all of his healthcare finance and reimbursement life, he favored market-type, or mixed-market public program solutions to the failing private health care system. He never believed that he would advocate complete and exclusive government financing of American healthcare. But the conclusion was ineluctable. Below is the story of “Why”.] <br /> <br />The year was 1992. The Author was a healthcare attorney with an interest in healthcare finance and reimbursement. And he knew something was wrong, massively wrong, with the healthcare finance and delivery mechanism. Healthcare was grossly expensive compared to other Western nations and a large amount of Americans were uninsured. Oh, and one more thing. By commonly calculated health outcome measures, the US lagged the Western nations that delivered lower cost universal coverage to their citizens.<br /><br />In 1992, the Author also believed that the private healthcare reimbursement industry would make efficiency gains to reduce, or at least restrain, the cost of healthcare. He worked for organizations that were attempting to find such solutions. But they ultimately failed. The entrenched health insurance and delivery industry won the lobbying war in Washington and went back to business as usual. <br /><br />As a person that generally favors free-market solutions, the realization that government could finance and reimburse healthcare providers with greater efficiency than private sector plans was a tough realization. But it is the only correct realization.<br /><br />And nothing has changed in the intervening 15 years. Healthcare is even more costly, there are more uninsured, and measurements still lag Western Europe. <br /><br /><strong>AMERICAN BUSINESS PAYING LOTS MORE FOR LOTS LESS.</strong><br /><br />American business people generally entertain the conceit that they are the best business people in the world. Some are among the top. Just as many European and Asian business people are among the top, also. But America is a business-friendly country where smart people, motivated people, can sometimes succeed and prosper.<br />But there is one area where American business people and corporations are comically negligent. Purchasing healthcare for their employees. They suck at it. They pay more and get less than even the (god forbid) government. Yeah, really. They munch. <br /><br />Government healthcare programs run at about 3% administrative costs. The crappy coverage that American business buy for their workers have administrative costs closer to 10% or even 20%. That sounds like a mobster’s skim. Some estimates place the cost of administration of the healthcare system at 25% of all expenditures.<br /><br /><strong>AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS A MORE EFFICIENT PURCHASER OF HEALTHCARE THAN AMERICAN BUSINESS. SAY IT SILENTLY A FEW TIMES. IT GETS EASIER. </strong><br /><br />Few Americans will accept the obvious, that government financed healthcare programs operate more cheaply than private healthcare plans. The reasons are very simple. We will use Medicare as the model for government-financed healthcare. <br /><br />1. The Medicare plan is a well-defined and consistently applied benefit plan. Private plans vary widely in benefits and simplicity or complexity of administration. Medicare’s consistency reduces costs of administration.<br /><br />2. Medicare claims submission and reimbursement infrastructure are well-established and well-tested. This robustness of the claims adjudication mechanism reduces administrative costs. <br /><br />3. Medicare eligibility is consistent over time and there is not a large amount of beneficiary turnover. The eligibility criteria for Medicare are fairly straightforward. Turn 65 and you are generally eligible for Medicare. Become disabled and eligible for SSI disability benefits and you are eligible for Medicare after an elimination period. After that, Medicare beneficiaries remain eligible for Medicare until their death.<br /><br />4. The Medicare membership pool is huge. It dwarfs every private plan, and the irrational hodgepodge of state Medicaid programs. It can leverage huge economics of scale to reduce costs.<br /><br />In private healthcare plans, beneficiaries move between jobs and healthcare plans. Further, employers change health benefit plans quite frequently, often every three to five years. A good deal of administrative costs are spent figuring out who is eligible and who is not. For employer-based plans, eligibility changes every month with employee turnover.<br /><br /><strong>NEARLY EVERYONE INVOLVED IN HEALTHCARE FINANCE, POLICY AND REIMBURSEMENT KNOWS GOVERNMENT PLANS ARE MORE EFFICIENT THAN PRIVATE HEALTH PLANS. SO WHY DON’T THE COME OUT AND SAY IT?</strong><br /><br />The statement above comes as no surprise to anyone that knows anything about healthcare reimbursement. But given the broad ignorance of the common American, few common Americans know this. And there is another catch. Few politicians wish to acknowledge this fact. Because they know if they speak the truth, the healthcare lobby will steamroll them just as it steamrolled all meaningful healthcare reform attempts in the 1990s. The healthcare lobby has its lips around 16% of America’s Gross National Product and won’t disconnect without decapitation.<br /><br />This nation is locked in an ideological and political struggle from which it probably cannot extricate itself. Republicans have no plan, and will not submit any plan, to reform healthcare financing and reimbursement. They simply lie in wait to pounce on any Democratic proposals. Probably smart politics. But disastrous policy. <br /><br />Democratic policy proposals recognize the hegemony of the healthcare lobby and the heft of its war chest. The proposals offered by Democratic Presidential candidates, with the exception of long-shot Dennis Kucinich (who proposes single payor), are a sop to the insurance industry. Instead of “cutting out the middleman” and expanding government healthcare plans, these Democratic proposals will funnel government funds to purchase health benefits for the uninsured. Rewarding failure. That is what America seems best at.<br /><br /><strong>THE AUTHOR’S PROPOSAL.</strong><br /><br />Medicare Part E (Everyone). Medicare would be expanded to everyone in the US. No private market alternatives. <br /><br />Medicare primarily covers seniors, but since Medicare covers SSI participants, it can and does administer benefits for working-age adults, including pregnancy and family planning coverage. Pediatric benefits would be relatively simple to incorporate into Medicare E. And Medicare E would also contain a drug benefit where the Medicare program would negotiate prices with the pharmaceutical manufacturers. It is that simple. <br /><br />Insurance companies would not all go out of business, however. The Medicare program would continue to contract with them for claims, case management, and benefit administration services. At cutthroat prices. Halliburton and Bechtel need not apply.<br /><br />Medicaid, a grossly complex mess of state systems, each with its own labyrinthine rules, would end. The Medicaid Long Term care programs would be pulled into Medicare Part E with roughly the same coverage and impoverishment requirements. <br /><br />Politically impossible, but administratively simple. Universal care. Cradle to grave. <br /><br />And the cost of healthcare would decrease as the administrative costs (insurance companies, brokers, agents, other assorted parasites) are eliminated. And with the government exercising monopsony power over healthcare providers, prices would fall. Providers would have no other choice. Get more efficient, or get out of the business. That is the lesson of capitalism providers never had to learn. Under Medicare Part E, they will have to learn fast.<br /><br />MOST EVERY LESSON IS A HARD ONE IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-37495526780528523802009-03-08T13:10:00.000-07:002009-03-08T13:14:45.360-07:00Back in a Place like Grover’s Corners...According to Frank Rich in his New York Times Sunday’s Op-Ed piece entitled ”Some Things Don’t Change in Grover’ Corners”, there has been a spike in the number of recent productions of Thornton Wilder’s classic play, “Our Town”.<br /><br />Rich writes:<br /><br /><em>You can see why there’s a spike in the “Our Town” market. Once again its astringent distillation of life and death in the fictional early-20th-century town of Grover’s Corners, N.H., is desperately needed to help strip away “layers and layers of nonsense” so Americans can remember who we are — and how lost we got in the boom before our bust.</em> <br /><br /><strong>PAROCHIALISM PATRONIZED OR COMMONALITY RE-BRANDED.</strong><br /><br />The Author grew up in a place interchangeable with Grover’s Corners. A small town in a ubiquitous out-of-the way corner of America. A well-stocked graveyard where only the dates and the first names changed. A park named after a Revolutionary War veteran. Flags and nativism. Shuffling old men and jostling kids sharing the same small Main Street. And churches full of some kind of faithful notions.<br /><br />Rich continues:<br /><br />…<em>the Stage Manager comes upon the graves of Civil War veterans in the town cemetery. “New Hampshire boys,” he says, “had a notion that the Union ought to be kept together, though they’d never seen more than 50 miles of it themselves. All they knew was the name, friends — the United States of America. The United States of America. And they went and died about it.”<br /><br />Wilder was not a nostalgic, sentimental or jingoistic writer. Grover’s Corners isn’t populated by saints but by regular people, some frivolous and some ignorant and at least one suicidal. But when the narrator evokes a common national good and purpose — unfurling our country’s full name in the rhetorical manner also favored by our current president — you feel the graveyard’s chill wind. It’s a trace memory of an American faith we soiled and buried with all our own nonsense in the first decade of our new century. </em><br /><br /><strong>STAGE MANAGERS NOT YET VARNISHED WITH THE “LAYERS AND LAYERS OF NONSENSE.</strong><br /><br />As kids we saw the nonsense, understood some of it, and felt free from all of it. And hoped that whatever future lay before us, Grover’s Corners was behind us.<br /><br />“Our Town” took place in the first decade of the 20th Century. We are now a hundred years away from those folks. Shellacked with even more layers of nonsense.<br /><br />A hundred years away from Grover’s Corners, the country faces another depression. The second time in less than one hundred years. As kids in Grover’s Corner we listened to our grandparents spin tales of hard times. Bank failures. Collapse in confidence.<br /><br />Kids don’t listen. But they do have confidence. And what faith they have is faith in growing up smarter and avoiding a fate worse than death, the fate of their town.<br /><br /><strong>WHEN DID THEIR TOWN BECOME OUR TOWN?</strong><br /><br />“Our Town” debuted in the hard times of 1938. Nine years after the Stock Market Crash of 1929. <br /><br /><em>In the 71 years since, Wilder’s drama has become a permanent yet often dormant fixture in our culture, like the breakfront that’s been in the dining room so long you stopped noticing its contents. Requiring no scenery and many players, “Our Town” is the perennial go-to “High School Play.” But according to A. Tappan Wilder, the playwright’s nephew and literary executor, professional productions have doubled since 2005, including two separate hit revivals newly opened in Chicago and New York.</em> <br /><br />Just as “Our Town” has become a cultural fixture, the “Their Town” has perhaps inexorably, become the Author’s Town. <br /><br />But with Wilder’s Grover’s Corners “Our Town” came a faith, a faith in commonality of purpose. An iconic place that can exist, that hope can create when the present has been debased and prostituted.<br /><br />But even if the play has become a cultural fixture, can the national faith of “Our Town” be revised, re-branded, or at least revisited? <br /><br />The Author, and his childhood friends, long ago picked “Their Town”. Their cloth was cut early, their chains girded later. Their faith long subsumed by a reality of mean psychic subsistence. <br /><br /><strong>CAN OUR TOWN RETURN?</strong><br /><br />Some face this national economic challenge with hope and resolve. Some with despair and resignation. Some, like the Author and his friends from Grover’s Corners, left their faith on Main Street and the school yard. But not their intellect and that small place that remains unlayered in nonsense.<br /><br />Is the country in a place where whatever faith may be gleaned from “Our Town”, or whatever was missed by a reading of “Their Town”, be made common again? Or is the best we can do a nostalgic re-release of a 71-year old play that first showed when hardship reigned and recovery had yet to dawn.<br /><br /><strong>THE AUTHOR HAS PLAYED THE ROLE OF THE STAGE MANAGER IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!</strong>FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16834274.post-43656042194110289342009-03-05T09:29:00.000-08:002009-03-05T09:44:13.184-08:00MOTORCYCLE RIDING KEEPS RIDERS YOUNGAn <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Lifestyle/Story/STIStory_345836.html">article</a> from the Singapore Straits Times on March 4th lays out the results of a study which finds that motorcyling keeps the brains of middle-aged men young. <br /><br />The article, set forth below, should be good news for men wishing to convince their spouses that a motorcycle should be in their future. Per the article, morotcyle riding demands a high level of awareness and that this awareness is invigorating for the brain. <br /><br />From the Author's perspective, riding a sportbike demands a very high level of awareness. The Author's Ducati is a difficult bike to ride and its perfromance attributes demand a high level of road awareness. A moment's lapse can be highly detrimental to the riding experience. <br /><br />In one sense, it did not take a scientific study to convince the Author that riding a motorcycle keeps one young. But science is the lingua franca in the Desert of the Real and we prefer to let the data do the talking.<br /><br />HERE COMES THE SCIENCE...<br /><br /><em>TOKYO - RIDING motorcycles helps keep drivers young by invigorating their brains, the scientist behind popular 'Brain Training' computer software said on Wednesday, citing a new scientific study. <br /><br />'The driver's brain gets activated by riding motorbikes' in part because it requires heightened alertness, Mr Ryuta Kawashima said after his research team and Yamaha Motor conducted a string of experiments involving middle-aged men. <br /><br />'In a convenient and easy environment, the human mind and body get used to setting the hurdle low,' he warned. 'Our final conclusion is that riding motorcycles can lead to smart ageing.' <br /><br />Mr Kawashima is the designer of 'Brain Training' software, which incorporates quizzes and other games and is available on the Nintendo DS game console under the name 'Brain Age' in North America. <br /><br />A self-professed motorcycle fan, 49-year-old Mr Kawashima cited a new study conducted jointly by Yamaha and Tohoku University, for which he works. <br /><br />One experiment involved 22 men, all in their 40s and 50s, who held motorcycle licences but had not taken a ride for at least a decade. <br /><br />They were randomly split into two groups - one asked to resume riding motorcycles in everyday life for two months, and another that kept using bicycles or cars. <br /><br />'The group that rode motorbikes posted higher marks in cognitive function tests,' Mr Kawashima said. <br /><br />In one test, which required the men to remember a set of numbers in reverse order, the riders' scores jumped by more than 50 per cent in two months, while the non-riders' marks deteriorated slightly, he said. <br /><br />The riders also said they made fewer mistakes at work and felt happier. <br /><br />'Mental care is a very big issue in modern society,' said Mr Kawashima. 'I think we made an interesting stir here as data showed you can improve your mental condition simply by using motorbikes to commute.' -- AFP</em><br /><br />RIDE SMART, RIDE SAFE, IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!FOXP2http://www.blogger.com/profile/08457839518227249242noreply@blogger.com0