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Archive for 2013
May 6, 2013
MORE FAKERY: Cheryl Nelson, 52, stalked self for a year on Facebook, blamed ex-boyfriend. “And you thought the crazy went away with AOL!”
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: The Real Reason Older Men Like To Date Younger Women.
I THINK I’D RATHER WATCH WELCOME TO MYRTLE MANOR: Danish Show “Blachman” Offers Unkempt Men’s Opinions On Naked Women.
MARKDOWNS AND DEALS IN the Levi’s Store at Amazon.
IF YOU’RE A DOG PERSON, YOUR SKIN MICROBES SHOW IT: “New research shows that two strangers who both own dogs are more likely to share similar skin bacteria than a married couple without a dog in the home. The study also found that dogs have more skin bugs in common with their human owner than other dogs.”
OUT TODAY FROM KEVIN WILLIAMSON: The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure.
SO YESTERDAY I REFERENCED THE ONGOING RELEVANCE OF “DUCK AND COVER,” and that led a reader to write:
It’s not only for nuclear war.
When large meteor exploded above Russian city few months ago quick thinking teacher remembering civil defense training had her students get under desks and stay there until shock wave hit:
She was badly cut by flying glass, but none of her students was injured…..
At School No. 37 in Chelyabinsk, a quick-thinking substitute teacher, Yulia Karbysheva, got all 44 of her fourth-graders out of harm’s way as the meteor lighted up the sky, the Interfax news agency reported. After the intense bright flash of its explosion, the children rushed to the windows, but before the shock wave could hit, she commanded them to get under their desks.
Karbysheva was showered with glass and debris, but the children were unharmed. With a cut to a tendon in her left hand and a gash on her left thigh, she led her class to safety outdoors. The doctor treating her Saturday at Hospital No. 9 told Interfax she would recover.
Yes, whenever you see any unexplained bright flash, ducking and covering is likely to prove wise.
CRAMMING ADVICE: What’s Better? Studying More, Or Getting Sleep? I always went with “more sleep.”
ABANDONED: CBS News: Diplomat: U.S. Special Forces told “you can’t go” to Benghazi during attacks. “The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa. The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.”
UPDATE: CNN: Former Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya: U.S. Military Assets Were Told to Stand Down.
THE CARNIVAL OF NUCLEAR ENERGY is up!
JOEL KOTKIN: Religious Freedom Lures Many From Asia To U.S. “Christians, who make up some 42 percent of Asian-Americans, face surveillance and repression, particularly, in China, where religion is tightly regulated, and dissent from the party line can land adherents in jail. Over half of Asian immigrants, Pew notes, cite freedom of religion as a key advantage of living in America. New faith-based migration could also be seen soon among Christians fleeing increasingly Islamic regimes in Egypt, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries.”
MEGAN MCARDLE ON HEALTH INSURANCE: How the Oregon Study Should Change Our Thinking.
I think that this would tell us something different: not that health care is bad, but that health insurance doesn’t actually improve access to necessary treatment that much. If someone else covers the cost, it can help with the financial burden of health care. But uninsured people will mostly find a way for the most important treatments, the ones we know improve health, from stitches to control bleeding, to antibiotics, to blood pressure medication. It’s the expensive stuff on the frontier–the stuff that’s as likely to be useless, or harmful, as it is to help–that the uninsured mostly forego.
A bunch of people sarcastically asked whether I was planning to drop my health insurance. The answer is no, because my employer pays for it. But if the question is “Has this caused you to revise downward your estimate of the value of health insurance?” the answer has to obviously be yes. Anyone who answers differently is looking deep into their intestinal loops, not the Oregon study. You don’t have to revise the estimate to zero, or even a low number. But if you’d asked folks before the results dropped what we’d expect to see if insurance made people a lot healthier, they’d have said “statistically significant improvement on basic markers for the most common chronic diseases. The fact that we didn’t see that means that we should now say that health insurance, or at least Medicaid, probably doesn’t make as big a difference in health as we thought.
Certainly, this bolsters my belief that health insurance should provide financial protection from catastrophic events, not wrap-around first-dollar coverage. Those who used to read me on The Atlantic may recall that the McArdle Plan for Healthcare involved the government picking up the tab for any medical expenses above 15-20% of income: simple, progressive, and aimed at the actual problem we know health insurance can fix. Unfortunaely, Obamacare made that sort of coverage functionally illegal.
Not enough opportunity for graft. Or control.
ANDREW CUOMO ADVERTISING FOR BUSINESS TO COME TO NEW YORK, BUT NOT DOING MUCH TO MAKE THINGS MORE ATTRACTIVE. “Do the job well and you won’t have to spend a penny on publicity. If New York state became a genuine leader in business-friendly reform, headlines everywhere would blare the news out for free. Every sentient business leader in America would know that New York state was open for business again. Sadly, that’s unlikely to happen. New York’s politicians are addicted to a system of crony capitalism, sweetheart deals and a regulatory environment that hurts New York City even as it squeezes the life out of the struggling cities upstate.”
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And, today only: 3M Streaming Projector Powered by Roku, $169.99 (43% off). “The portable ultra-compact 3M Streaming Projector Powered by Roku allows you to wirelessly stream your favorite online movies onto a 120-inch projection field.”
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: American Exceptionalism And Starving Goats.
ADVICE TO KELLY AYOTTE: If you want Morning Joe to go back to ignoring you, start talking about Benghazi again. Then again, since as far as I can tell the only people who watch Morning Joe are rightbloggers looking for material, maybe this is a below-the-radar concern for her. . . .
BLOOMBERG: How Al Gore Got Romney-Level Rich.
WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, MARKEY SHOULD PROBABLY JUST CONCEDE SO THAT MASSACHUSETTS CAN HAVE A HISTORIC FIRST: Jennifer Braceras: Latino Gomez puts lie to Dems’ story line. Instead, I expect they’ll smear him six ways from Tuesday, and probably say — as Bill Richardson has already said about Ted Cruz — that he’s not a “real Hispanic.” Because diversity!
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A Lousy Economy For College Grads: “Many of those Boomers clinging to jobs are doing so to support you. Yes, it’s a fine irony, isn’t it? If you got a decent full-time job, Mom and Dad could stop sending you money for rent, gas, etc. But since millions of Boomers have to keep their jobs to be able to support their unemployed offspring, there are fewer openings than there would be if Boomer Mom and Dad could quit and retire.”