There are many many reasons and area of disagreement between myself and the Edward Kennedy, but I never doubted that the man held his convictions from a sincere belief and desire to do good.
He has died may he rest in peace.
Sorry for being a little late with my Sunday Night Movie Feature, but I didn’t finish my Sunday Night movie until tonight, Tuesday night.
Exhaustion on Sunday prevented me from watching the film in a single seating as I prefer to do, and a migraine on Monday prevented me from doing anything at all except dragging myself through my day job.
So, onto the review and comments.
This week’s movie, Red Planet Mars (1952) I found what cruising through the list at Netflix. I’m a big fan of Netflix and especially of the instant-view capability through my Xbox 360. I saw the description and thought that this might be a campy movie worth a spin.
The film stars Peter Graves as scientist Chris Cronyn. Chris along with his fellow scientist wife Linda (Andrea King) have built a transmitter using new technology — the hydrogen valve — and are now attempting to contact the advanced civilization they believe is on the planet Mars. The world is thrown into panic and chaos by the messages they receive.
The film starts off strong, keeping fairly close to the science and paying attention to details such as the speed-of-light lag between Earth and Mars. It deals lightly, but does not ignore, the issue of finding a common means of communication between two beings without a common language. The characters are presented with consequences of the results of their messages. As Mars tells of fantastic life-spans and limitless energy whole industries panic and threaten to topple the economy of the west. There is a parallel story line about a German scientist working on his own hydrogen valve transmitter who is intercepting the messages for his Soviet masters.
This film did not work for me, but in order for me to tell you why it didn’t work I will have to deal in spoilers. Even though the film is 57 years old I’m going to put the rest behind a break for anyone who wants to avoid those mentioned spoilers.
Continue reading
In addition to thinking deep thoughts, constructing characters and plot, I have a shallow side.
My achievement of the day today?
135 Zombies killed and 9 rounds of Nazi Zombies in Call Of Duty: World AT War.
I have a number or friends who trust Instapundit as reliable and non-partisan source of information on the web.
Just due the prodigious number of link and the vast number of subjects they cover his site is a valuable site as a jumping off point to the wild and wooly web.
However, he is not a non-partisan source of information when it comes to things political. Here’s a classic example of how his post can be tilted in their wording.
IT’S ONLY WRONG WHEN BUSINESSES DO IT: VA workers given millions in bonuses as vets await checks. “While hundreds of thousands of disability claims lay backlogged at the Department of Veterans Affairs, thousands of technology employees at the department received $24 million in bonuses, a new report says.”
If you just read the post – and given the number of posts per day at his site people will rarely if ever follow each and every link — you get the impression that someone is defending the bonuses given out at the VA. After all it’s only wrong when businesses do it. I suspected that there was more to the story than his quip and one quote. (My guess would have been just a large number of employee bonuses over the course of a year.)
If you click through to the story — which I recommend — on CNN.com, you’ll find the that the tone of the story is very different than the tone presented by Instapundit.
A report issued by the VA’s Office of Inspector General said the department issued millions of dollars in awards over a two-year period in 2007 and 2008.
“The frequent and large dollar amount awards given to employees were unusual and often absurd,” the report stated.
The reports also called the payments “not fiscally responsible.”
and
The VA said it is pursuing a thorough review of the situation and it “does not condone misconduct by its employees and will take the appropriate corrective actions for those who violate VA policy,” according to a statement provided to CNN.
So while Instapundit posts it with the tone that Liberals and Democrats and other outraged by the huge bonuses recently given out on Wall Street are being hypocritical when it comes to government bonuses, the story itself is about how these abuses have been discovered by the inspector general and are being investigated and reviewed for action.
Instapundit is a cool site to visit and he presents lots and lots in link and information, but he is far from a non-partisan unbiased source.
So while I was washing the dishes I came up with an idea for Health Insurance reform.
Objective: Get everyone health insurance. Make it affordable. Give widest possible array of choice and interfere with what works in the current system as little as possible.
1) Let insurance companies sell policies across state line.
2) Mandate that everyone must have health insurance just like auto.
3) Policy products can NOT have their pricing vary based on the customer. For example. BIG HEALTH INSURER has Policy PPO Platinum, everyone who buys that policy says the exact same premium. The price of the product is independent of the customers condition.
4) No one can be turned away from health reasons or pre-existing conditions.
5) All policies are open to all customers. (A company cannot say, you can only buy from this list and not that. If I pay for it you have to sell it.)
6) The poor get government assistance in paying for their policies.
This solves the problems of people with pre-existing condition being priced out of the market. It requires everyone be in the pool to spread the risk. It leaves the final solutions to the market, which I think works better than state solutions.
IF this did not work, then we could look at public-options and such, but I think this would give the market a chance to make it happen.
Maggie Gallagher is an active player in the fight against marriage equality. Recently a columnist asked in his paper for those against marriage equality to make measurable prediction of the ill-effects of gays being allowed to marry. She responded in a post of at NRO’s The Corner. Here are her answers.
Continue reading
Bounding around on the SFWA websit I found this link to a site on the history of food. What was avaiable when and the history of a number of dishes.
Really this can be a time waster, but loads of fun.
So I gave my thoughts on health care reform, now some quick thoughts on the future of medicine. (I am a science-fiction writer after all.)
Three basic scenarios in my opinion. All of these are looking at the state of medical science about the year 2050.
Scenario One: The Conservative Nightmare.
Financial crash due to bloated spending and regulatory overload kills innovation and development. We haven’t progressed much beyond where we are now. Very little research being done as nearly all medical science dollars are consumed in treatment. With or without healthcare reform the government is buried under a crushing load of debt and bills to care for its population.
Scenario Two: The Liberal Nightmare.
Breakthroughs lead of significant advances in health and life extension, but the costs are high. The processes can not be made cheaper by economy of scale or mass production and only the well-off can afford top-end care. For the wealthy life is very good. Disease and morbidity are things that happen to other people. As side from trauma, there is little to fear health-wise and maybe even aging itself can be prevented. For the poor and most of the world it’s a game of watch as the rich go on and on while you get sick and die. Expect vast social upheaval and disruption as this is not a stable system in my opinion.
Scenario Three: Medical Transformation.
The way computer sciences changed our world, advances in medical science make the world of 2050 as unlike todays as our computers are to roman numerals. Quick and easy genetic testing and treatments means that everyone get treatment and drugs designed for their unique genome. Treatment of disease is cheap and plentiful. Healthcare for all is taken for granted because it costs so little. People live long and productive lives without the infirmities and indignities of old age today. Our decedents look upon our medical treatments of today the way we look on witch-doctors and leeches.
The question is — which scenario will it be?
We knew she could sing from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, here’s Ms. Day in a musical video inspired by her own Web Show — The Guild.
h/t to Wil Wheaton for the link.
I work in the healthcare industry in my day job. I help drug companies get their products to market. Some of you might read those words and think I work in some kind of advertising and you would be wrong. Most of my experience in this field has been helping doctors and patient get their drugs via their health insurance. Currently I help uninsured patients get access to certain medications. (I am not at liberty to say which drug companies I work for or which products I assist with, but I only bring it up as background on my experience with the subject.) Continue reading