Author Archives: Bob Evans

The mendacious postings of Instapundit

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.

Share

An idea for Health Insurance Reform

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.

Share

The Future of Medicine.

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?

Share

Thoughts on Health Care Reform

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 →

Share

Sunday Night Movie: The Towering Inferno

towering inferno

I have a confession, I like disaster movies. I guess part of it comes from the fact that came of age as a movie watcher during the 1970s when the disaster film was created as a genre. Oh before the seventies there were films that had disasters in them and films about the Titanic, but as its own genre the disaster film dates to the 70s.

The genre started with 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure. Based on a novel by Paul Gallico that film became an enormous success and in Hollywood that means one thing, imitations.

The Towering Inferno for me represents the apex of the disaster genre. Made and released in 1974 the film boasted an all star cast, was the first film that required two studios to produce it and made a vat-load of money at the box office. (the film cost 14 million to make and grossed 116 million at the box office.[Domestically])

I was thirteen when The Towering Inferno hit the theaters in the winter of 1974 and I saw it at the Sunrise Theater in Ft. Pierce, Fl. The film was thrilling and action packed and a good staple of the disaster film genre. You didn’t know who was going to live and who was going to die.

The Towering Inferno is the story of the world’s tallest building — a fictional one set in San Francisco — that catches fire on its opening night. With an all star cast, led by Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, it is the story of people trapped far above the ground with a deadly and uncontrollable fire racing up the floors of the tower.

All through the 70’s other producers tried to follow in Irwin Allen’s footsteps. There were all sort of disaster movies and some were better than others, but I think that the ones made by Irwin Allen have survived the test of time over the imitators for a simple reason. The two films that represent the high budget big-star disaster movie made by Irwin Allen, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno were not cynical movies.

The films of the 70’s were very much drenched in cynicism.  People are no damn good, governments are no damn good, companies are no damn good, and it’s all going to end in nuclear holocaust. While in Irwin’s films there are nasty and greedy men who cause terror and death by their greed, there are also heroes. Even when the heroes do not get along and snap and fight with each other, their core motivations are good and they look out for those who cannot look out for themselves. That is the polar opposite of the cynical outlook.

An example of this is the character of Gary Parker, a US senator . If this film was made today the senator would be a self-centered egotist who only cared about saving his own hide and about not looking like he was scared. It would be a character of image and lies. This is not the character played by Robert Vaughn in The Towering Inferno. This Senator is heroic, works to help save others, and never seems to be motivated by his own self-interest. We would not expect such behavior because we are too cynical now, and it was worse in the 70’s.  Then as now too many people mistook cynicism for wisdom.

It’s really interesting how quickly this film was made. The production company started filming in late spring on 1974 and the prints were released to theaters nationwide, not in a limited grab-the-Oscar-nomination but a wide release, in December of the same year. A film of this scope and complexity simply could not be done that quickly today.

The disaster movie is not for everyone, but if it’s is your taste or you want to see a good example of this genre rent The Towering Inferno.

Share

Movie Review: District 9

district9_m

It was a few months ago that I first saw the previews to the film, District 9. I was intrigued by the preview but did not become really motivated to see the movie at that time. However, as time passed and I heard bits here and there I became more interested in this project until finally I was committed to seeing it on the opening weekend.

District 9 is produced by Peter Jackson best known for his Lord Of The Rings films, and was directed by Neill Blomkamp in his feature film directorial debut.  My understanding for the history of this film ties back the proposed HALO movie. Peter Jackson and his company Wingnut films had obtained the rights to make a movie base on the popular video game franchise HALO. Jackson had selected Blomkamp as the person to direct the HALO movie. Sadly, due to constant downward revisions in the budget by the studio, Jackson was forced to abandon the HALO project. Jackson and Blomkamp then raised the money to make a feature film out of a short subject Blomkamp has directed in 2005, Alive in Joburg. District 9 was the result.

The setup for District 9 is more of an alternate history than a near-future science fiction. Twenty years ago an alien spaceship enters Earth’s atmosphere and come to rest hovering above the South African city of Johannesburg. Eventually the aliens are settled on the ground in a special area, District 9, which becomes an alien slum. The film takes place twenty-some years after the arrival and after a great deal of human alien interaction had been established.

I am not going to delve into the plot of the film because to talk about it in even general terms will be spoiler-like. It is not that the film’s plot is totally new and unheard of, but rather the style with which the film is made makes this a very fresh way to approach the plot.

The production design on this film is just fantastic. For many years the look of science-fiction films had been sterile white affairs. In 1977 George Lucas gave us Star Wars in which he presented a lived in universe. A universe where things looked old, beat-up, and dirty. (It’s a shame he lost this when he revisited the series. Everything looked just made in the last three films.) Between Star Wars and Ridley Scott‘s Alien, SF films became dirtiy and more rough looking. District 9 takes this to a whole new level. Shot in a documentary style the production design of District 9 is one of total realism.  It’s not just lived in, the production looks real, as though Blomkamp simply walked into District 9 and started filming with a handheld camera.

The special effects are truly mind blowing when you think about them. And you have to think about them to remember that they are special effects. Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings was an impressive achievement as a digital character. The aliens in District 9 are to Gollum as Gollum was to digital characters before him. There was no moment in the film where I thought to myself, that’s pretty good but it doesn’t really sell me. By the use of puppets and digital characters and attention to detail in the sound department these aliens have become the most credible cinematic aliens yet filmed.

It is a shame that Blomkamp never got to make his HALO movie. He showed me here that he would have brought a vision and talent to the film that would have surprised the world. I’ll be following this man’s career and look forward to his next movie.

Share

A response to thoughts on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Over at National Review’s The Corner blog there have been some comments about the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Mainly the comments are about how women today seem to be falling for Jimmy Stewart’s character, Ransom Stoddard, more than John Wayne’s character Tom Doniphon. Many of the people at NRO seem to feel that this is a shame and are more sympathetic to Doniphon as a heroic character.

A number of email reposes from ladies supporting their love for Doniphon were posted and I just had to say something. I emailed one of the writers to let her know my thoughts of the characters and I thought it would make an interesting post here as well.

There are spoilers so do not follow the link unless you’ve seen the film or do not care about spoilers. Continue reading →

Share