MORE ON THAT DUMB KNIFE BAN PROPOSAL: “Hunters, whittlers and Boy Scouts, beware – your knives may soon be on the government’s chopping block. The Obama administration wants to expand the 50-year-old ban on importing ‘switchblades’ to include folding knives that can be opened with one hand, stirring fears the government may on the path to outlawing most pocket knives.”
Archive for 2009
June 26, 2009
GOOGLE VOICE rolling out to select invitees.
HEALTH CARE’S BIG SECRET? Even the ‘uninsured’ like their coverage. “There’s no reason to nationalize health care because most Americans are happy with the coverage they receive — including most of those who don’t have health insurance. Eighty-nine percent of Americans are satisfied with their own personal medical care, according to an article in Regulation magazine this week. Of those with insurance who had suffered a serious illness during the last year, 93 percent were satisfied; 95 percent of those who suffered chronic illness were satisfied with their health care.”
HMM: Record fall in Japan prices fuels deflation fears. So are we headed for deflation, or inflation? Or first one, then the other?
CHANNELING HUGO CHAVEZ: A bill to repeal the 22d Amendment. Don’t see that happening, though.
AN INCONVENIENT CONSTITUTION: “It’s that time of the year again: time for the re-introduction of the perennially hopeless Enumerated Powers Act in Congress. Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) has pimped the idea—a law requiring members of Congress to cite the specific constitutional provision authorizing their legislation—for years in the House. He introduced the bill’s latest House-side iteration back in January. This week, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) introduced the bill in the Senate.”
June 25, 2009
STEEP MARKDOWNS on classic DVDs.
THE CASE AGAINST CASH FOR CLUNKERS.
CAP-AND-TRADE TO LIMP ACROSS THE FINISH LINE IN THE HOUSE? “The Democrats, not having read the bill, were unable to comment.”
I’M ON PROF. JOHN BANZHAF’S PRESS-RELEASE SPAM LIST, and now he’s emailing that one of these defibrillators could have saved Michael Jackson:
Jackson’s Unnecessary? Death – Why No AED?
Inexpensive Device Could Have Saved Michael and Millions of DollarsMichael Jackson’s death today may have been unnecessary, and might have been prevented by a device called an AED. Such a device, if present in his home, probably would have offered the only realistic chance of saving his life once sudden cardiac arrest [SCA] occurred, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.
“A $1300 device, proven effective and increasingly found in homes, might have saved Jackson’s life,” argues Banzhaf.
Unlike a heart attack, SCA is almost always fatal unless a defibrillator is used to shock the heart back into a normal rhythm. Indeed, about 95% of people who experience SCA die before reaching the hospital. C.P.R., which reportedly was administered by the ambulance crew which responded to Jackson, can in some cases keep the blood flowing, but defibrillation at the hospital usually occurs only after death or irreparable brain damage has already occurred.
Even under the most favorable conditions, there is usually no substitute for having a defibrillator in the home, which is where 80% of SCA attacks occur.
There’s actually some question whether that’s really true — while AEDs work great in public places, when people keel over at home there’s often no one around to apply the defibrillator. Given Michael Jackson’s usual gang of hangers-on, of course, that probably wouldn’t apply to him.
UPDATE: Chuck Simmins emails:
Have been a working EMT since 1995, I can tell you that a bad rhythm is not the only reason a heart arrests. A drug OD, an aneurysm, a prolonged seizure, any number of things. The defib works only if certain abnormal rhythms are present. There are also lots of rhythms that will kill you and the defib will not shock for.
CPR is almost universally unsuccessful in an unwitnessed arrest. The paragods worked him because of who he was. Joe Blow on the street would probably have been pronounced at the scene. They worked for 45 minutes, that means they did not have a sustainable rhythm for that long. Michael was dead and neither the paragods or a defib would have brought him back.
Yeah, AEDs are great, but they’re not magic. One day, everyone will have a built-in ICD, though it’ll probably do lots of other things, too.
UNEMPLOYMENT: The Perils of the Second Derivative.
A TV LOW POINT: Turned on the TV to see Geraldo interviewing Tommy Mottola about Michael Jackson’s death. In the background, footage of the body being delivered to the coroner’s office by helicopter. Glad to see Fox is keeping us up on what’s really important, the night before a big cap-and-trade vote in Congress, while revolution simmers in Iran, and people are trying to nationalize healthcare.
On the upside, Mark Sanford is probably pleased.
JAMES LILEKS LOOKS AT Burger King commercials through the ages.
OBEY AND WATERS IN EARMARK ALTERCATION:
Two Democrats got into a verbal altercation — and according to one a physical one — on the floor of the House on Thursday night over an appropriations earmark one was seeking.
After the House floor had largely cleared following a series of votes, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) split apart from a heated conversation and began yelling at one another.
My favorite bit: “Obey turned away, but Waters went to go huddle with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. She could be over heard telling them: ‘He touched me first.'” The country’s in the very best of hands.
Just a few months ago, members of Congress took turns wagging their fingers at CEOs of the automakers for not making tough choices–not shedding “legacy costs,” not making products consumers wanted, not cutting bloated bureaucracies. Detroit had become self-referential, unable to compete because it was unwilling to deal with its internal constituents. . . .
Detroit is Google compared to Washington. Year after year, Congress makes laws but almost never repeals them. Washington is like a huge monument to legacy costs. Laws from the Depression will send tens of billions in unnecessary subsidies this year to farmers, organized labor and other groups thought to be in need–80 years ago. Bloat is also notorious–it’s nearly impossible to fire anyone under civil service laws, so layers of middle management have grown exponentially. Professor Paul Light found 32 levels in some agencies (compared to 5 levels in most well-run enterprises).
All this accumulated law–about 300,000 pages of federal statutes and regulations–operates as a form of central planning. It bogs people down in bureaucracy. In healthcare, the labyrinthian requirements of Medicare, Medicaid, HIPAA, plus the equally dense, and often conflicting requirements of 50 states, plus the insurance company red tape, make it impossible for people to deliver care efficiently. Add to that bureaucratic nightmare the ever-present fear of being hauled into court whenever a sick person gets sicker, and you have a system that looks like it was designed for frustration and waste.
Read the whole thing.
DAILY BEAST: Is Obama Protecting The Saudis?
WHAT IS IT WITH THESE PEOPLE and Trig Palin?
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Prospects for a fairly efficient Maxwell’s Demon. Let the fast-moving molecules through while stopping the slower ones — or vice versa — and you can heat or cool without expending much energy, if the process of choosing is efficient enough. Maxwell’s thought experiment used a demon opening and closing a tiny door, but it’s not impossible to imagine doing the same thing with nanoscale systems.
SATURN’S MOON ENCELADUS may host an ocean.
MEGAN MCARDLE on Ben Bernanke’s testimony to Congress: “He is now giving a very good impression of someone who is lying.” But it’s all good: “Congress wants someone to blame. Besides, firing Bernanke lets Obama portray all of the failures of this year as Bush errors in policy or appointment.”
SOME PARTS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET are more important than others.