This article (worded in predictably bellicose HuffPo prose) talks about a poll last week on the healthcare reform debate. Poll numbers like these are regularly cited on the right side of the fence to support the idea that the American people do not want healthcare reform. The responses for “do you favor or oppose the current healthcare proposal?” look bad for the reformers and good for the opposition: 47% oppose it and only 41% are in favor. However, if you look at why people oppose vs. support the current reform, a different picture emerges.

It seems that a healthy chunk of those who oppose the current proposal do so because they are in favor of healthcare reform in general, but the current proposal doesn’t go far enough. Lots of people apparently agree with Dennis Kucinich.

When you look at who’s actually in favor of healthcare reform in general, versus opposed to it, you get just over 49% in favor and only 30% opposed. Half in favor of reform. Less than a third opposed to it. If the Senate looked like that, the opposition would not be able to filibuster.

Notably, however, the Senate is not debating healthcare reform in general. They’re debating the current bill. If the poll is to be believed (and this caliber of poll generally is), the majority of Americans want healthcare reform, but half of those supporters want the Democrats’ current proposal killed because it’s not enough.

Here’s my quick-and-dirty Excel layout of the results  (after the cut). Continue reading →

All the hip kids these days are debating the whole healthcare crisis thing. And I agree it is a crisis. Yes, we’re living longer than ever before — so one might argue that we have no crisis, because we should just be happy with the way things are — but I would argue that the crisis is not really physical; it’s moral.

As usual in the American political world, the two sides are throwing accusations at each other, packed with unspoken and inflammatory assumptions. Like-a so:

GUY 1: Opposing the President’s healthcare reform clearly indicates that you think it’s okay for people to die just because they’re poor and because the pharmaceutical companies are greedy.
GUY 2: Supporting the President’s healthcare reform clearly indicates that you think the Federal government should take away taxpayers’ freedom to keep their own property and make their own decisions.
GUY 1: You obviously believe that only spoiled rich people have the right to a healthy, pain-free life!
GUY 2: Well, you obviously believe that victims and lazy people should be able to demand honest, hard-working people’s money at the point of the IRS’s gun!
GUY 1: You, my friend, are apparently a Fascist.
GUY 2: And you, sir, are a Communist.

The problem as I see it, as in many political issues, lies ultimately in our oversimplification of the issues. Well, some of us. Others don’t do this. But pretty much anyone on TV is leading the oversimplification army over the cliffs of doom every freaking day. Continue reading →

After an incredibly frustrating morning in which my time was wasted, fun things were foregone, and I had to drive all over this frickin’ burg with an arm that felt like daggers were being driven down between the bones every time I had to shift a gear, I finally got my little shoulder immobilizer (and a 500-pack of ibuprofen). The immobilization really does help. Now to see if I can get any work done. Sadly, I may need to go to school (meaning: drive) to get the files I need, since they seem to have corrupted themselves on my flash drive. Hm. Vexing. But the day has settled down into basic pleasant Saturday, finally.

BTW, Amanda and Laine were both kind of right (he said, with an embarrassed expression). I have a sling, and I have drugs (if only ibuprofen), and I have a paper that shows me exercises to do, lest my shoulder seize up on me (!!!). The doctor’s opinion, after an x-ray that clearly showed I had several bones, was that I might have slightly dislocated it, or damaged, torn, or “snapped” a muscle in my rotator cuff. AGH! If it’s any of the latter items, then my follow-up next week will be unpleasant, I’m thinking. At least financially.

All in all, I’m annoyed at the pain and the restriction of my activities (probably for a few weeks), but very happy it wasn’t worse.

so, I did an endo in a little dirt and grass field not far from home, just now. My laptop and other sundries were in my bag on my back. Luckily, I broke the fall with my FRIGGIN’ SHOULDER! Holy ow. As soon as I got up, realizing what had happened, the pain kicked in. Major pain. It has calmed a little as I have begun learning how to not anger it. My hand and forearm work just fine, but anything requiring my upper arm to move away from my body is several kinds of agony. Ow.

So, I am pumped full of 1000mg of ibuprofen, had a hot bath (getting out was not easy, and drying is going to have to be of the “drip” variety for a while), and now I’m in an odd position on the couch, from which I can protect said shoulder. Ow. I don’t think it’s out of its socket or anything; my guess is that I just tore or strained some muscles. Ow.

So, no kayaking tomorrow, for sure (couldn’t lift a paddle, let alone a boat). No biking (I tried that on the way home; no dice). I suppose I could walk, as long as I keep arm-swing to a minimum. >:(

I just read this (probably biased, but still…) highly pessimistic report on the State of Massachussetts’ bold experiment with universal citizen health care. I have long been torn by this issue. I want everyone to have health care, and it seems like a friggin’ crime that they don’t. But I realize that it’s friggin’ expensive, and that the state is not usually a better manager of market forces than markets are (though note our recent financial meltdown for the kinds of delicious things markets are capable of).

Massachussetts’ program was apparently to give individuals financial help in buying health insurance from private companies (HMOs or something like them), but… only allow them to buy from certain corporations on a list? The creation of this list is corruption-fodder a-go-go. And people get fines if they don’t get health insurance with their government subsidy. Or something like that.

Maybe I’m naive (probably), but it seems, if you’re a universal-health-care kinda person, there would be an easier and more humane way to skin this cat. Let me know if any of this stinks to you (it seems too simple): Continue reading →

September 2006: Dexter. Backyard. Persistent. Adopted.

September 2007: Moses. Weeds at reservoir. Loud and fearless.

September 2008: Unnamed cat from campus. Grotesquely wounded.

He’s in the cat carrier, now. I’m off to the vet in a few minutes. My friend was showing me the cute, sociable kitten on campus, when he decided to do a Superman-type thing and landed face-first on concrete. He tore open his lower lip/face. It stopped bleeding soon, and he’s behaved pretty normally since then. No vets were open last night (except the $150-for-the-consultation-fee emergency service), but one told me on the phone he’d probably be all right. And sure enough he slept pretty much 13 solid hours, then at 7:00 began to destroy my bathroom.

No pictures, because his face looks… kinda horrific. But he is one of the yellow/orange stripey type cats. Maybe 8 to 12 weeks old? Young.

Hm. He’s stopped meowing. That won’t last once we get into the car.

I seriously do not go looking for these beasts, and stuff like this hasn’t happened between the Septembers. Sadly, I will not be keeping this little monster, either, even if (as I hope) he turns out healthy and not very seriously hurt. Two cats is enough.

Autism Caused by Vaccines?
Autism-vaccine controversy has lately captured (more of) my attention. You can’t search for “autism” or “vaccine” even separately on Google without stumbling across a dozen blogs dedicated to this subject¹. This is obviously an area of  high passions. People’s children are being diagnosed with very scary, fundamentally unsettling disorders at increasingly high rates (although the rate of increase of the rate seems to be slowing down, a fact cited as support by both sides of the debate), and nobody has any solid answers about what causes this, or how to fix it.

Though of considerably lesser consequence, epidemiologists’ competence is also being called into question. I’m sure this has at least something to do with the drama.

It seems  that the “vaccines cause autism” side of things is being driven largely by reports of people whose children have received vaccines and then been diagnosed with autism, countered by a boatload of empirical studies suggesting the there is no link. Personally, I think the studies so far still leave room for a possible association (perhaps only for a few individuals?), but this would not be the broad-strokes disease model suggested by the so-called “mercury militia.” If vaccines imparted a general, across-the-board risk for autism — even a fairly small or inconsistent one — it would almost certainly have shown up in spades by now. It hasn’t.

The Null Hypothesis
Whether vaccines cause autism or not, the discussion illustrates a sinister mental error we humans make. Well, more than one, actually². The null hypothesis can help illustrate the concepts here³. The null hypothesis is a fairly simple and logical concept, yet we so rarely apply it. It is simply the question,

“What would I expect to see if my suspicions weren’t correct?”

See how insidious that is? Nobody likes to sit around and seriously consider the possibility that they may be wrong⁴. So, let’s look at this possibility, as much as a lazy sometime-blogger can, within a limited amount of time and not being paid to do this.

In case this is not clear by now, I think people may be tempted to assume (especially if they never stop to think about it carefully) that a lack of association between vaccines and autism would mean that nobody ever had the experience of autism being diagnosed fairly soon after a vaccine. However, I will show that this is not the case at all. In fact, if there’s no association, we should still expect to see quite a number of cases like that.
Continue reading →

1. The blogs tend to be written by nonscientists interested in asserting that vaccines cause autism, whereas the scientists don’t usually have blogs arguing back [↩]
2. Repeat after me: correlation cannot prove causation [↩]
3. Despite its sullied reputation in peer-reviewed research [↩]
4. Did I mention the scientific method? It can help with this kind of stuff [↩]

Do you know this bug?

Funny Things:

1. Craigslist – To the Drunk Hottie who Fell off my Motorcycle
2. Very brief story of a girlfriend who is a little… well, just read it. (warning: there’s a swear)

Not Funny Things:

1. Armed Forces Journal (a fairly conservative venue): “…waterboarding is a torture technique that has its history rooted in the Spanish Inquisition…”
2. Former Chief Prosecutor (for Guantánamo and similar trials) explains his resignation “it’s time to take the politics out of military commissions… and make the proceedings open and transparent.”
3. Interesting Newsweek article about how being poor and living far from grocery stores is really bad for your health (something I saw quite a lot of in rural Indiana).

A couple of nights ago, my friend Brad and I had a discussion. It got me thinking, as I often do, about mi patria (the United States), its role in the world, and its future on the international stage. This morning, while trying to find a citation for homicide rates as (lousy) indicators of overall crime rates, I ran into a 2005 article titled “The next 50 years: Unfolding trends,” in what appears to be a good peer-reviewed academic journal.

The article has a section titled “America’s Retreat.” He predicts the end of U.S. international dominance by about 2050, with clear signs starting a few decades ago, and becoming more apparent very soon. He cites a lot of economic indicators, such as national debt, increasingly weak currency, and huge (and increasing) trade imbalances. He has graphs (pretty ones) and apparently rigorous data analysis. Some nifty excerpts from the article, after the jump. Continue reading →

…who thinks about pandemics much more than I do, and who is probably suffering the effects of the first global pandemic right now. Great. I’m married to a vector.

A large-scale, dedade-long study of abstinence programs in the U.S. has released its final report. The popular press has gotten the main findings right: the programs don’t seem to have any impact on teen sexual behavior. But there are some other interesting things, too: Continue reading →

Diane Arbus would be proud.

I don’t know why I suddenly started to like this little snapshot. maybe because it looks so surreal, with the contrast of the three different qualities of light. I find interesting incongruities in the subject matter, too. Actually, it’s just Alex and me having dinner at a cabin in Tennessee, and I didn’t intend any of the interesting aspects of the photo; accidentally interesting.

In other news, this morning on my ride to work, I understood how I will eventually die. I will be lying in a hospital bed, and the doctor will have a grave look on his face (he will look like the doctor from BSG), and Alex and the children will be shaking their heads, sadly, as if they knew it all along. The medical chart will show that I have multiple cancers, respiratory problems, and probably some kind of brain damage, all due to biking to work while sucking down the exhaust of a hundred pickups and SUVs per day. In the next hospital room over, there will be a soccer mom and her yuppie husband, in for a checkup, and in perfect health. In fact, they’re so healthy, they’re scrapping their plans to start cycling, or taking walks. The doctor tells them they’ll live to be a hundred, as long as they avoid breathing any of the air outside. Cause that stuff’ll kill ya.

Stairs at Museum in NYC 5/06

In this post: missed Temple appointment, delicious dinner, scary book leading to survivalist mentality, worms in cat’s butt.

Continue reading →

I am pooey and barfy. It’s a bad sign when you’re in the bathrooom to do #2, but you know it sounds like a very loud #1 outside the door :(.

Continue reading →