The First Thanksgiving.

A hilarious reenactment of the first Thanksgiving that includes references to small-pox-covered blankets, the Pequot War, and King Philip's War:

[NSFW!] Problems with the plumbing.

Two vagina-related points today:

1. Humans have apparently long had a fear of vaginas with teeth (vagina dentata). Someone recently decided to take that fear to the next level by making a horror movie entitled Teeth about a girl who regularly uses her vagina-teeth to bite off body parts.
2. The more horrifying story: "My vagina fell out." Apparently female genital prolapse "is characterized by a portion of the vaginal canal protruding from the opening of the vagina." In other words, an innie becomes an outie, as seen below. I would not wish this on anyone.
   

I guess I'm not stupid...

...at least that's what Dr. Jon LaPook, who works for CBS and has an awesome name, tells me: "No, you're not stupid if you're confused about health care reform."

His piece in HuffPo today is about how politicians, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, etc., have intentionally made this issue impossible for most people to get a handle on. And he lays the four main goals of the legislation:

Coverage expansion and subsidies. This is where most of the estimated trillion dollar price tag over ten years would go -- to expanding Medicaid for uninsured and lower income people and to help people who can't afford it pay on a sliding scale for insurance through new health insurance exchanges.

Insurance market reforms. This is about fair play in the insurance industry. Advocates want to eliminate practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions and jacking up premiums if they're sick. The most controversial proposal is the
establishment of a "public option" -- a government insurance plan that would compete against private ones.

Delivery and payment reforms. This is about delivering more effective care at a lower cost. About 20 percent of the 2.5 trillion dollar annual health care price tag does not contribute to better health.

Prevention. This has been long overlooked in America. Spend a few dollars on foot care for a diabetic and you may prevent a foot amputation and thousands of dollars in expenses.

I know embarassingly little about the health care system, so I'm curious as to what you guys think about this. Clearly, the reforms mentioned above are needed, but does the current legislation go about it in the right way? Is it an efficiant use of a trillion dollars? Etc. Thanks!

China Lights Up.

Two bewildering stories relating to tobacco have come out of China recently, and both make me glad to live in the USA:

1. The Gongan county government of central China has ordered civil servants in the area "[...] to puff their way through 230,000 packs of local Hubei-produced cigarettes over the year," or face a fine. Contradictory to the central government's policies intended to curb smoking, this edict is an effort to stem losses of tobacco tax revenue to non-local cigarette producers. The edict has since been put "under study" to determine if it should be in place or not.

2. Tong Liangliang, a two-year old from China, now holds the unofficial record of being the youngest chain-smoker in history. Liangliang (pictured above) was pushed to smoking by his father, who believed that the cigarettes would numb the pain of the boy's hernia until he grew old enough to have an operation for the condition. Liangliang's smoking began about six months ago, but he is already smoking a pack a day and "[...] resists all his father's attempts to take away his only pain killer."

Let's move to rural Siberia or Malawi.

The BBC has aggregated a lot of information about swine flu into a convenient map of the spread of the disease over time. Finally, an excuse to move to Siberia.

"Going Dutch"

This article by Russell Shorto (author of The Island at the Center of the World and Descartes' Bones) is a relaxed examination of the similarities and differences between the American and the Dutch social welfare systems. This is not a number-filled article, but rather a straightforward discussion of some of the pros and cons of both the Dutch and American systems. Shorto also discusses the cultural roots of the two systems and the historical forces that shaped the trends of each system.

One of the interesting points raised in the article:

This points up something that seems to be overlooked when Americans dismiss European-style social-welfare systems: they are not necessarily state-run or state-financed. Rather, these societies have chosen to combine the various entities that play a role in social well-being — individuals, corporations, government, nongovernmental entities like unions and churches — in different ways, in an effort to balance individual freedom and overall social security.

And, a hilarious summary of the Dutch personality:

'If you tell a Dutch person you’re going to raise his taxes by 500 euros and that it will go to help the poor, he’ll say O.K.,' [an American expatriate] said. 'But if you say he’s going to get a 500-euro tax cut, with the idea that he will give it to the poor, he won’t do it. The Dutch don’t do such things on their own. They believe they should be handled by the system. To an American, that’s a lack of individual initiative.'

...like I need another hole in my head.

A doctor in Australia drilled into a twelve-year old's skull using a household drill (taken straight out of the maintenance room) in order to lessen pressure caused by internal bleeding suffered during a bicycle accident. The hospital had no neurological drills and no neurosurgeon, so general practitioner Dr. Robert Carson had to perform the surgery while being instructed by a neurosurgeon over the phone--this doctor told him things like where and how deep to drill (I imagine the answers to be 'the head' and 'not too deep.' Wow, those look dirtier than I realized they would.). The boy is fine and returned home on his thirteenth birthday.

How do you heal an amputated limb?

I don't want to give too much away, but possibly the most interesting NPR segment I've ever heard aired this morning, about a guy who had his left arm amputated, only to start feeling intense pain in his phantom limb later on. He wasn't crazy - he knew he had no limb, but his brain was sending him signals to the contrary ("my whole arm clenched up really tight and my nails dug into my palm"). I'm not going to say anything else, so go listen here.

(By the way, I re-listened to this at work, and I laughed out loud both times the exchange ending with the doctor saying "how would you do that indeed?" came up at about 3:20)

... and More Articles!

Hey, if you're going to steal from Bart, why stop at just one?

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"Dr. Doom," famously pessimistic NYU economics Professor Nouriel Roubini, argues that the best solution for resolving the toxic asset problem is (temporary) nationalization. Without it, he argues other options result in one of three problems:

If government takes on debt:
1. Overvaluing assets ---> Massive cost to taxpayers
2. Undervaluing assets ---> Risks massive bank failures
If government helps private sector keep debt:
3. Non-transparency and/or overcomplication (see Tax Code, the)

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In a rather odd article, scientists have discovered a bacterium in the Russian mammoth graveyard that may extend the duration of human lives in general, as well as the duration of their sex lives.

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I only read a little bit of this article, but it seems there's been something of a real-life Catch Me If You Can, with a woman taking on fake lives at Ivy League schools as part of her rouse.

Promise for the Future...

We all have our issues. I mean, the issues floating around society that we are more interested in than the average person.

This is one of mine.

How to sit: 135 degrees?

I've been working full time for a little over six months now. Even in this short time, my physical health has been in fantastic decline. I'm more likely to eat out (even eating healthy foods doesn't help because food portions when eating out are always greater than what I would eat at home). I get far less exercise - I don't walk anywhere. And I'm always tired when I get home.

Add that to the fact that I've always had a bad back (probably mostly due to bad posture) and it's clear I need to do something. While researching things I can do to help my back and my posture (Wii Fit has been good as well) I came across this BBC article, which claims that the best angle at which to sit is 135 degrees. Anybody ever heard this before?

An Effect of a Ban on Indoor Smoking

An email from my Aunt Marcia (I have no idea when she is quoting and when she is using her own words, so I will just give you the entire email):
"Heart Attack Rates Still Fall 3 Years After Indoor Smoking Bans

Myocardial infarction rates continue to fall 3 years after indoor smoking bans are implemented, according to a study in MMWR [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report].

The CDC notes that nine studies have shown quick drops in hospitalizations for myocardial infarctions after laws go into effect prohibiting smoking at work and in public places, but the report is the first to show this reduction continues for several years.

The study examined the rate of hospitalization for myocardial infarction in Pueblo, Colorado, after a smoke-free ordinance took effect in 2003. Rates dropped 27% in the first 18 months and an additional 19% in the next 18 months.

'These findings provide support for considering smoke-free policies an important component of interventions to prevent heart disease morbidity and mortality,' the CDC concluded."

A new sin tax

To begin: "A study by the Centre for Science in the Public Interest showed that soft drinks were the single biggest contributor to calories in the American diet [...]"

That's right, soda beat out meat, starches, grains, fruits, and vegetables; it beat candy, cookies, and cakes. That quotation makes me feel uncomfortable drinking a soda, even if I am able to ignore the various environmental reasons for avoiding the drinks (e.g. creation of plastic bottles and draining of aquifers near bottling plants, particularly in impoverished areas in other countries (e.g. India)).

Now it seems as if Gov. Patterson is trying to change this frustrating/disgusting consumption pattern. Under Patterson's new budget plan for 2009, "[...] consumers will have to pay an 18% tax on non-diet sodas and sugary drinks." Obviously this faces resistance from drink companies and the American Beverage Association, but I am all for this policy. Sin taxes are (or at least should be) designed to discourage behavior that has a demonstrable negative effect on the person or a negative spillover effect on the community as a whole (e.g. soda leads to obesity which raises all health care costs). I think that taxing what largely amounts to a luxury good as a manner of both improving the overall level of health in the community and as a budget deficit filler is a fantastic idea. I would love to see the price of soda skyrocket to the point where it becomes as unappealing to consumers as its lasting effects are to those who actually study these effects.

Also, I have no qualms about the fact that this policy is regressive. Poverty is highly correlated with (and sometimes causally linked to) obesity, which is also causally related to soda consumption. At this point soda needs to be made a less appealing option so that money spent on calories is directed at the (slightly) healthier available alternatives as economic pressures force people to buy cheaper foods. I know that the healthy foods are the expensive foods, so it is all the more important that we push people toward the healthier end of their available consumption spectrum as their available spectrum shifts to a lower dollar level. We can take this recession and use it as a tool to shift preferences so that they take into account the true cost of the decision to drink soda. Basically, if we can get poor people to make healthy decisions we will be taking a lot of the burden off our health care system, which helps everyone and will hopefully create a positive-feedback loop that leads to lower levels of poverty (as, say, total time out of work due to poor medical treatment declines).

In the end I am actually also just happy to have another, better excuse to quit drinking soda. I hope that was coherent; I am very cold and it is pretty early.

"Inhaling Fear"

...is the title of a NYTimes op-ed today (side note: "a NYTimes" or "an NYTimes"? the latter sounds right to me (thanks to vowel sound at the beginning of the pronunciation of the letter "N"), but, N being a consonant, I though maybe it should be the former...).

Anyway, it's about how brain studies have shown that anti-smoking ads actually lead people to crave a cigarette more and how anti-smoking efforts should be reformed.

I don't know how to fix this, because I don't really understand why people smoke at all (because it's relaxing and looks cool, of course, but the health risks just seem so obviously a deal-breaker, for me), and I don't even know if it's the government's place to tell people not to do something that's legal. Acccording to the op-ed, they're using money from a Big Tobacco settlement on these ads, which is better than taxpayer money, but are public funds being used for similar campaigns, like encouraging kids to exercise? I'm not really cool with that (despite the fact that I obivously think that children should exercise and not smoke cigarettes).

Obituary of a man with no short-term memory

Random, weird, and fascinating.