android photography

Some interesting stats about doctor specialization and quality health care in the U.S.:

Communities with more primary care physicians have lower mortality rates, according to a new study, confirming the advantages of wide access to primary healthcare services.

The problem is that fewer and fewer doctors are choosing to be primary care providers; instead, they want to be specialists.

At least 95% of the available residency positions in general surgery, orthopaedic surgery, plastic surgery, and emergency medicine were filled through the National Residency Matching Program, the results of which were released on March 17. However, the number of positions for family practice filled by medical students declined for the eighth straight year, officials of the program said.

Well, no real surprise; specialties are where the money is. Unfortunately, this bodes ill for most of us:

Today, the position of the U.S. on leading health indicators among industrialized countries (those in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD]) is at or near the bottom and has worsened during the past decade while the proportion of specialists has grown, according to the authors' analysis of health status. Although the U.S. has approximately the same number of physicians per 100,000 population as the OECD average, "this number masks a very different balance between generalists and specialists," the authors write. . . . The excess supply of specialist physicians in the U.S. compared with generalists fuels policymakers' concern about an increasing inequity in health services, the authors write. Because specialty care is more costly than primary care and the population receiving the care may have to share in some portion of that cost, services are more likely to be located in more economically affluent areas. "Thus, care will be preferentially available to the already advantaged, with increasing social disparities in health."

So the doctors will get richer, the rich will get healthier, and the poor (which will be an increasing percentage of the population) will get sicker. And die.

I just love it when I'm cheerful.

Via Medscape (registration required)

Greg Palast says that the Bolton and Wolfowitz nominations are part of a neocon purge in the Bush administration. Why? Because they dared to tangle with Big Oil:

The neo-cons wanted to use our control of Iraq's oil to smash OPEC, to smash the power of what they see as an Arab-controlled monopoly and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, that also meant smashing $56-a-barrel oil prices, and the oil industry was deeply unhappy. . . . You have to understand that the real levers of power are not in these public jawboning jobs. The real levers of power are behind those closed walls. So Wolfowitz had his power. He now has to take his hands off the levers, and Bolton is now in a position where he is told what to say, and he is not a person setting policy. The neo-cons understand what's happening here, and they are screaming bloody murder. But they’re all being purged. This is a very big change in U.S. policy toward people like Negroponte, who are State Department establishment, oil-friendly, OPEC-friendly, Saudi-friendly.

Not to mention death-squad friendly. But hey, that's just a little more collateral damage, something you have to accept in order to accomplish the greater good of ensuring ongoing enormous profits for the oil companies. W, of course, was himself an oilman, though a failed one, as with all his other endeavors. He and Cheney were willing to use the neocons for a time, but their ultimate loyalties are clear. Neither one of them has any ideals; they are the political version of the Mafia. The neocons, deluded as they are, actually believe(d) what they were pushing.

See Bill. Bill is a soldier.



See Bill interrogate Iraqi prisoners. See Bill torture Iraqi prisoners. (''I'm here to win. I'm here so our civilization beats theirs! . . . Sadism is always right over the hill. You have to admit it. Don't fool yourself – there is a part of you that will say, 'This is fun.' '') Torture, Bill, torture.



See Bill. See Bill cry. Why is Bill crying? Is he crying about the Iraqi prisoners he tortured? Oh, no. He is not crying about them. He is crying about Terri Schiavo. ("No, we're not going to go home," said Bill Tierney, a young daughter at his side. "Terri is not dead until she's dead.") Cry, Bill, cry.

This is too cool. A mathematician named Daina Taimina has found a way to construct physical models of hyperbolic geometric surfaces, using, yes, crochet. What are hyperbolic surfaces, you ask? Read this interview with her and her mathematician husband, complete with illustrations of some of Taimina's models.

(via Making Light)

Happy Easter. And on this day of mysteries, here is an article from NewScientist on 13 things that do not make sense, a fascinating glimpse into some of the research questions facing science today.

(via Making Light)

A site dedicated to tracking what the rest of the world thinks about us, complete with translations of foreign news articles.

(via TalkLeft)

What I finally had to confront was the fact that truth alone is impotent in the face of modern propaganda techniques.

--Billmon

Amazing:

The appointment of George Bush's leading hawk as head of the World Bank was [sic] heading for a crisis over his relationship with a senior British employee.

Influential members of staff at the international organisation have complained to its board that Paul Wolfowitz, a married father of three, is so besotted with Oxford-educated Shaha Riza he cannot be impartial.

Extraordinarily, they claim she played a key role in pushing the 61-year-old Pentagon official into the Iraq War. And the row comes amid claims that Wolfowitz's wife Clare once warned George Bush of the threat to national security any infidelity by her husband could cause.

So what led us into Iraq? The desire for oil? The desire for revenge? No, just desire of the most primitive sort: a man being led around by his dick starts a war to impress his mistress. It would be merely tawdry, merely pathetic and laughable, if it weren't for all the slaughter and destruction that has resulted.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers . . .

-William Wordsworth, 1806



(Via this commentary about too much stuff: Everything I Own, Owns Me)

My results:

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!

by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

That's all I can say to the news that Karen Hughes is being nominated to a Cabinet-level position in the State Department.



Tim Grieve at Salon has a little more to say:

George W. Bush's media advisor, confidante and alter ego will return to Washington soon -- apparently to become the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. If that's the job Bush picks for Karen Hughes, she'll have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. And if that's the case, we've got a few questions we'd like to see Hughes answer under oath -- and not just the one about how, exactly, her experience as a TV news reporter in Texas prepares her for the job of rebuilding the image of the United States in the Middle East.



1. When you abruptly ended a 1998 interview in which Dallas Morning News reporter Wayne Slater was talking with Bush about his arrest record, were you trying to prevent Bush from admitting that he had been arrested for drunk driving in 1976 or were you covering up some other arrest?



2. In ghost-writing Bush's autobiography, "A Charge to Keep," you claimed that Bush took it upon himself to volunteer for the Texas Air National Guard and suggested that he continued flying for the TANG long after he actually did. Did you believe those statements were true when you wrote them? Did the president?



3. Did you out Valerie Plame? And if you didn't, who did?



4. When Wolf Blitzer asked you last year how abortion would factor into the presidential race, you said: "I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. . . . The fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life." Do you believe it is fair to equate Americans who support abortion rights with terrorists?



5. You know the president better than just about anyone. What was that bulge on his back?

This is what I want to be like when I'm older:

March 13, 2005 6:10 AM EST
The Seattle Times

SEATTLE - Call Helen Burcham Green one wired lady.

The Bothell, Wash., resident exchanges e-mail with relatives around the world. She writes books on her Mac computer and she advises people not to trust everything they find on the Internet.

'It's too easy to do the research, and you can't depend upon it,' she said. 'People want to take shortcuts today.'

Of the world's computer literati, Green could be the oldest.

She turned 103 on March 2.

She entered the computer world a decade ago after writing her first book, an extensive family genealogy that traces ancestors back to the 1400s.

Her grandson Jamie Green, a computer-science graduate, and her daughter-in-law Betty Green convinced her that editing would be simpler if she took advantage of today's technology.

So she's writing her current book - her life story - on a computer.

Green found the switch from typewriter to computer relatively easy. She keeps notes on how to do things until she masters the technique.

'I was an avid typist,' said the woman who once earned her living as a secretary back in the days of shorthand and manual typewriters. 'This is like typing.'

SeniorNet, a Bellevue, Wash., computer-learning center for people older than 50, often has people in their 70s and 80s sign up for classes, said registrar Louise Flora, but Green's age and computer knowledge make her a rarity.

'We had a woman in her 90s several years ago, but I don't know anyone 103 using a computer,' she said.

Long before the computer era arrived, Green lived through the rise of the automobile, airplanes, space exploration, radio, television, modern movies and microwaves. She remembers eating barley bread during World War I when flour was rationed, and she has ration books from World War II.

Her grandfather was a builder and came to Seattle after the 1889 fire to help rebuild the city. Drive Green to the Green Lake, Wash., area, and she'll point out houses he built and a church he helped found.

She recalled her family home at the south end of Lake Union in Washington. In the early 1900s, it was in the woods. She was number seven of 10 children, the last surviving sibling. Her father later moved the family to a farm near Yakima, but she hated the country life.

When she finished high school, she moved to San Francisco.

'My mother and brother fought it. They said that when girls went to San Francisco, they went bad,' Green said.

She went to business college and became a stenographer. When Bertha Landes, Seattle's first woman mayor, was elected in 1926, Green announced she was moving back to Seattle. She wanted to work for Landes.

Instead, she landed a job across the hall from the mayor's office.

She met her future husband at a dance and was married two years later. When the Depression hit Seattle, Green lost her job and the young couple lost their first home.

'That broke my heart,' she said. Eventually the couple, who had two sons, built another house in Lake City, Wash.

Together they traveled around the country one month each year so Green, a longtime Daughters of the American Revolution member, could do genealogy research. Her husband, Robert Green, died in 1976 before he saw his wife's book completed.

The inconveniences of aging, including hearing loss and dimming eyesight, have caught up with Green's body but not with her mind.

She lives with a son and daughter-in-law and uses an electric wheelchair because she's unsteady on her feet. She still reads, particularly Seattle history books.

Dainty, meticulous in dress and wearing pink polish on her manicured nails, she insists on helping with chores around the house. She does her laundry and gardens by tending pots on the patio. She clapped for joy when daughter-in-law Betty Green handed her a $103 gift certificate for Molbak's, a gardening center, so she can get more plants and pots.

Those pots will sit on the patio outside her office window. She'll sit at her computer, turning stacks of notes into chapters of her memoirs and watching the flowers bloom.

(Reprinted from the Seattle Times, distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.)

Rivka at Respectful of Otters (great name) talks about the realities of debt:

My household once made the mistake of assuming, based on our quaint 1990s expectations of the economic world, that an intelligent and personable individual with good work habits would be able to find a job in a major city. On the basis of that assumption, we signed a lease for an apartment which, when a job failed to materialize, we couldn't afford. Was it ridiculous for us to be paying $950 in rent with a combined annual income of somewhere around $24,000? Yes. Was it ridiculous of us to assume, when we signed the lease, that two working adults would be able to pull in more than $24,000? I don't think so. We had not adjusted our expectations to the bold new rules of the new economy, the 'ownership society' in which it was our responsibility to plan ahead for such common eventualities as a year of un- and underemployment. But even if we had adjusted our expectations, it's hard to imagine what we could've done to cushion ourselves against such a severe economic shock.

What did we do instead? We borrowed money from our parents, and we maxed out my credit card. (That's my generation's version of unemployment compensation, after all.) Eventually, we fell behind in our bill payments. At that point we were flooded by new credit card offers, far more than ever before or since, all of them bearing stratospheric interest rates and enormous penalties for late payments. Five or six offers a day. We were terrible credit risks at that point, and the credit card companies were falling all over themselves to sign us up for more debt.

But they would've been shocked, shocked if we'd defaulted on our loans. We would've been one more example of why Congress needed to protect them from the economic risks of their poor decision-making. And no one would've made speeches to them about their need to take 'ownership' of anything... but our assets.

Welcome to the new economy.

Credit card debt has replaced the safety net. As Rivka says, no wonder people are declaring bankruptcy at record rates. And our good friends in Congress have just made it a lot harder for people caught in that trap to ever escape from it.

The Veterans Affairs Secretary has resigned, and depleted uranium may be the cause. Look at these statistics from Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law:

"Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!" The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.

We've all heard the horror stories about Agent Orange, and the long-term suffering of Vietnam vets from its effects, as well as PTSD. If that was only a 10% disability rate, how is a 56% disability rate going to effect us? And remember that DU is still being used in the current Iraq war; we can expect similar rates of long-term disability in the future, or possibly even higher due to the DU that is still in the Iraqi environment from a decade ago.

And, of course, the people who are suffering most from DU are the Iraqi people themselves, who are exposed to it on an ongoing basis. Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.7 billion years.

Can you say "war crimes"? Because I sure can.

Teresa, over at Making Light, has posted some fairly well-known texts, translated into Anglo-Saxon. Here's the first one:



On frymðe wæs Word, and þæt Word wæs mid Gode, and God wæs þæt Word. þæt wæs on fruman mid Gode. Ealle þing wæron geworhte ðurh hyne; and nan þing næs geworht butan him. þæt wæs lif þe on him geworht wæs; and þæt lif wæs manna leoht. And þæt leoht lyht on ðystrum; and þystro þæt ne genamon.



See if you can guess the other ones (there's a bonus entry down below the first three).

Very interesting--this graphic maps book purchases by political affiliation.

"This" being, of course, the pseudo-grammatical insistence that "their" should only be used with a plural antecedent. This site bursts the pedantry bubble. Send the link to your eighth-grade English teacher, and be free.

A brief meditation.

That's what the new bankruptcy bill in Congress will do to ordinary Americans. Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School, and three of her law students have started a site (an adjunct blog to the excellent Talking Points Memo) to track the bill. Here, she delineates some of its worst features:

**********************************************************************************
The bill is more than 500 pages long, all in highly technical language. But the overall thrust is pretty clear:

• Make debtors pay more to creditors, both in bankruptcy and after bankruptcy, so that a bankruptcy filing will leave a family with more credit card debt, higher car loans, more owed to their banks and to payday lenders.

• Make it more expensive to file for bankruptcy by driving up lawyers’ fees with new paperwork, new affidavits, and new liability for lawyers, so that the people in the most trouble can’t afford to file.

• Make more hurdles and traps, with deadlines that a judge cannot waive even if someone has a heart attack or an ex-husband who won’t give up a copy of the tax returns, so that more people will get pushed out of bankruptcy with no discharge.

• Make it harder to repay debts in Chapter 13 by increasing the payments necessary to confirm in a repayment plan, so that more people will be pushed out of bankruptcy without ever getting a discharge of debt.

There are people who abuse the system, but this bill lets them off. Millionaires will still be welcome to use the unlimited homestead exemption. And if they don’t want to buy a home there, they can just tuck their millions of dollars into a trust, a “millionaire’s loophole” that lets them keep everything—if they can afford a smart, high-priced lawyer.
**********************************************************************************
In the furor over Social Security (and a well-justified furor it is), some truly horrible bills like this one are getting passed with almost no attention paid. Contact your Congresscritters (just enter your zip in the box on the first page) and urge them to oppose the bankruptcy bill.

Tomtech at Daily Kos muses about historical precedent:

*******************************************************************************
I want to tell you about how a *quaint document which came into being when a group of insurgents, who had enflamed a native population to the point of engaging in an *armed revolt, came to power and wanted to ensure that revolt would never again be required. They also wanted to ensure that another revolt would be possible if the people decided it was necessary. The government was an occupying *imperialist nation.

One of the main reasons for the revolt was because the government placed large numbers of *troops in the homeland of the insurgents. The government was not seated in the country that revolted but used local officials and their own representatives to allow them to rule from abroad. The army's reason for being in the land was supposedly to protect them from foreign forces.

The government proposed a *tax system that was intended to make the inhabitants more reliant on the Empire. The government forced the nation to provide support for the occupying army by *economic control. As unrest was increasing government troops were sent into an insurgent stronghold to quell the rebels. When some children threw snowballs at the troops the troops responded with force. The number of casualties that included children who tried to resist the troops. This event actually was referred to as a *Massacre since the locals did not actually propose a significant threat to the troops. Two troops were actually convicted in a trial afterwards. Propagandists immediately capitalized on this incident to incite further rebellion.

The insurgents formed *secretive local committees to inform others around the world about the atrocities committed by the occupying army. The Government empowered a *corporation with subsidies in an attempt to show how benevolent they actually were. The insurrection began with an act of *economic sabotage where a group of disguised insurgents destroyed valuable economic assets of the subsidized corporation. The government responded with *economic sanctions and *increased oversight.

An *insurgent leader obtained intelligence that the occupying army was going to attack and after determining the method of attack arraiged for an ambush of occupying troops. The insurgents were severely outmatched by the occupying power but they formed an active resistance that led to *open warfare. The insurgents even organized a *military leadership structure even before the announced their intention to drive out the occupying army and form an independent government.

This insurgents formed a council* to generate demands and economically isolate the occupying government. These insurgents actually formed agreements* with other governments* that were antagonistic to the government. *Foreign soldiers were actually working with the insurgents. The Government hired *mercenaries and gave them unlimited authority to fight the insurgents. There were a large percentage of *loyalists who actively fought for the government forces. Complete revolt occurred after the occupying government declared a form of *martial law and declared that certain regions were in open revolt.

After the insurgents drove off the occupying army and then they actually created laws to *protect themselves in case rebellion again became necessary.

The insurgents used an unregulated press and vocal speakers to argue against the government which led to the uprising and they wanted to ensure that they could combat the government again if necessary.

The insurgents actually wanted to ensure their weapons could not be taken away from them so that they could have a local army. They actually thought that the local armed groups had to be available to protect themselves from government forces.

These insurgents wanted to prevent the government from finding proof of their complicity in terrorist acts.

The insurgents wanted to protect criminals so they could not be forced to admit their crimes and identify their co-conspirators

These insurgents wanted to force the government to make public the specific methods used to find evidence used against them.

These insurgents actually wanted rules in place to force the government to release them until the government proved their crimes in open court.

(*Link in original)
********************************************************************************

What's that saying about people who ignore history?

Ian Welsh over at BOPNews explains why the bankruptcy bill about to be passed by Congress is such a bad thing:

What creditors want is for the government to assume the responsibility for enforcing their bad loans. They want a nanny state - not one that looks after the little guy, but one which makes sure Shylock gets his pound of flesh - no matter what. They want to be able to loan to anyone, at any ridiculous rate of return, and for there to be no escape. Someone who is unlucky in their health, or makes some bad decisions, or loses their job, should become their slave until the debt is paid off. This is an old tradition - you used to be able to sell yourself into slavery to pay off debts.

Fairly generous bankruptcy laws are actually good for the economy. Want people to take economic risks? They aren't going to if they know that failure will mean a lifelong debt chain. Want a robust economy? One of the things that contributes to that is the ability of people to get out from under crushing debt. A person whose finances are so encumbered as to be a candidate for bankruptcy is an economic cripple unable to form new economic relationships and who often loses all incentive to work (since they see none of the benefits of their own labor).

There's a reason why Athens entered its golden age after Solon forgave all debts. If the US, with a citizenry struggling under record debt, needs anything, it is not tightened bankruptcy laws - it is laws against usury and laxer bankruptcy laws so that lenders begin to take some responsibility for who they lend to again.

Health experts say it is so widespread that their only option now is to try to control it--that is, manage new cases so as to keep death rates as low as possible, and try to keep it from spreading further.



The first is an uphill battle, as the virus has a 70% mortality rate. So far, the virus has not mutated into an easily transmissable human form, which is the only thing that is holding back a pandemic.



Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway reminds us what to do:



Plan and prepare for this now. We think of the flu as a winter bug, but the pathology of H5N1 can easily break the season model. The Spanish flu of 1918 did its deadly work in the summer and fall of that year.



I've told you before some of the things to do to get ready: get your own supply of Tamifu, obtain nanomasks, protect your business with additional insurance, and prepare for a time of possible civil disruption (what would happen in your locality if half of the public servents, cops to public health nurses were among the sick or dying? if the banks couldn't open?) at the level of being hit by a hurricane. I'm stockpiling food, water and cash--greenbacks, that is: what if the credit card verification systems can't work because there is no one to service the data lines? No, not in my house, so don't come looking for me, crooks. I've got a propane stove and camp lanterns (I'm a camper) which will all be recharged and ready in case we have power outages because there is no one to service the grid and the lines themselves. I'm getting a physical and updating all of my prescriptions now, finding doctors who can work and pharmacies which are open may be a problem later. I wouldn't want to find out I've got heart disease or other serious chronic problem under the circumstances, I want to know about it now.



Will my face be red if this all doesn't happen? No. I'll be well prepared for the next east coast hurricane, however.



Remember that the Spanish flu of 1918 had a lethality rate of 2-5% and 50 to 100 million died when the population of the planet was only 1.8 billion and air transportation was not commercially available. If this bug breaks out into human to human transmission, and the genetic odds favor it, this will be a major event in the history of civilization.

“A country that is now aspiring to an 'Ownership Society' will not find happiness in – and I’ll use hyperbole here for emphasis – a 'Sharecropper’s Society.' But that’s precisely where our trade policies, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, are taking us.”

Warren Buffett (via Just a Bump in the Beltway)

This diary at Daily Kos is a must-read. It's not too long; go read it now. Please.

I really like this site, which features cool time-lapse movies of plants.