Classic Posts: Food 2009

TW: For Ms. Blogger's best "Food" of 2009 we go back to a February, 2009 post:

From This is why you're fat a site where people submit photos of 'food'. It doesn't say whether or not anyone has actually eaten any of these items but given that the US has the highest obesity rate of any nation in the world, I wouldn't be suprised.

The Double Bacon Hamburger Fatty Melt

Three bacon-stuffed grilled cheese sandwichs for buns, cheese, bacon and two four-ounce beef patties.

Now that I take another look, the sloppy joe on a krispy kreme here looks kind of tasty...

A Climate Change Meme Rebuttal

TW: Here Ritholz tries to put some of the denialists into context. He does not claim it as definitive but this effort to condemn climate change UNLESS change believers can prove without ANY doubt its efficacy is a bad path for world.

From Barry Ritholz at the Big Picture blog"
"One of the memes I’ve heard recently in the climate debate is that there is no scientific consensus — that there is actually strong disagreement.

The main basis of this argument is that 31,486 dissenting scientists have signed a petition against the belief that Global Warming is man made at the PetitionProject.org. I don’t want to debate climate change; rather, I want to look at that argument to see if there are any statistical flaws in it. My problem is whenever anyone uses a single, out of context, data point. What does this number actually mean? Is 31,486 alot or a little? How many scientists are there in the US? etc..."


http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/12/statistics-scientific-consensus-on-climate-change/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+%28The+Big+Picture%29

Many Of Us Are Entering the Sweet Spot

From Ezra Klein at WaPo:
"For the past 10 years, I have been studying happiness around the world, in countries as different as Afghanistan, Chile and the United States. It has been an amazing foray into the complexity of the human psyche and the simplicity of what makes us happy. What is most remarkable is how similar the forces driving happiness are in various countries, regardless of a nation's level of development.
Wherever I look, some simple patterns hold: A stable marriage, good health and enough (but not too much) income are good for happiness. Unemployment, divorce and economic instability are terrible for it. On average, happier people are also healthier, with the causal arrows probably pointing in both directions. Finally, age and happiness have a consistent U-shaped relationship, with the turning point in the mid- to late-40s, when happiness begins to increase, as long as health and domestic partnerships stay sound."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/01/how_to_be_happy.html

World without Apollo

Day 2 of the best of Mr. Blogger - this one from July 20th.
He's a huge fan of the space program, such that it is.


TW: So today is the 40th anniversary of the landing on the moon. Many will ignore it, I suspect some of those younger than me do not particularly appreciate it. The rationale for going to the moon was always a bit precarious and certainly economically dubious. But for the Cold War mentality pushing us to one up the Soviets, there is no way the mission would have occurred.

Today folks still struggle to rationalize our continued investment in manned space flight. My guy, our POTUS, is not a spacenik, somehow despite being the right age he missed the space virus that swept those of his generation. He initiated a review our manned space program with the report due out in August. I strongly suspect the current Ares and Constellation programs (the ones that would take us back to the moon) will be curtailed in favor of less ambitious goals. A HUGE mistake.

The period from November 1963 until through especially the mid 1970's and to a certain degree the early 1980's was a series of negatives for the U.S. Numerous assassinations (oh how history could have been different), social unrest as we went through a series of racial, sexual and youth molting stages, the Vietnam War, Watergate and economic malaise (not to mention several fashion disasters). But there was one American achievement that helped buck up the nation and cement, despite all of the above, America's pre-eminent role in the world. The unique and seminal program to place a man on the moon.

The symbolism of that achievement to this day goes under-appreciated. No one could have done it. And for that reason folks were in awe.

Someone will go back to the moon and then to Mars. Whoever does so will achieve global primacy as the country that can do things no one else can. I suspect the next person on the moon will be Chinese or Indian. When that happens there will be hell to pay in the U.S. as a final nail on the notion of U.S. supremacy will have been delivered. When that happens, I just hope the folks unwilling to pay to retain our space programs (this is a bi-partisan thing, liberals want to solve poverty first-impossible- and conservatives have little vision and would rather build bigger bombers and stuff) keep there mouths shut (but of course they will not, I can see the Drudge headlines already...).

Another Reason Health Care Costs Keep Rising

TW: The trend is decades old but insidious nevertheless. From my view, to the extent we can shift from an increasingly indirect to a more direct payment model the better off we will be. The logic is obvious if one does not see a cost, one does not feel its pain and act accordingly.

Classic Posts: Art 2009

TW: Continuing with favorite posts from 2009, today "Art"

Ms. Blogger from June, 2009
Storm Drain Art from Brazil - the 6emeia project by Anderson Augusto and Leonardo Delafuente was created to brighten up the streets of São Paulo, Brazil. Over the years, their painted storm drains have turned into popular tourist attractions.




see more at Toxel

Rationing!!!

TW: If we can put a cap on some of the demagougery, we will be able to bend the cost curve. Bending the curve should be a bi-partisan effort.

From Ezra Klein at WaPo:
"The dominant perception in American medicine is that more is better: More insurance is better insurance, and more health care is better health care. If that were unambiguously true, cost control would be a really hard choice: Every dollar you weren't spending would be a dollar of health benefit somebody wasn't getting. But that's not what the evidence shows. Consider, as David Leonhardt does, the case of Richmond, Va.

'Richmond has actually lost some of its hospital capacity over the last decade. In 1996, the area had 4.8 hospital beds for every 1,000 residents. Today, it has about three. The cause of this is, in large part, state regulations meant to cut down on supply. "Hospital care has been, in a word, rationed," Leonhardt says. The result?

The quality of care in Richmond is better than in most American metropolitan areas, according to various measures, and it continues to improve. Medicare data, for example, shows that Richmond hospitals do a better-than-average job of treating heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia.

When I recently asked patients in Richmond whether they felt as if their care had been rationed, they found the question bizarre. “I feel like there’s nothing cheap about the care,” Janet Binns, a retired school district employee, said. After her elderly father fell down one morning, she e-mailed a doctor and was on the phone with him in minutes.

Yet when it comes to health care costs, Richmond’s rationing has made a clear difference. In 1992, it spent somewhat less than average, per capita, on Medicare — 126th lowest out of 305 metropolitan areas nationwide. Since then, though, costs have risen at a significantly slower pace than they have elsewhere. As a result, Richmond had the 39th lowest costs in 2006.'

The regulations that squeezed the Richmond medical industry are much stronger than anything being contemplated on the national level. The state has a strong "certificate-of-need" program in which doctors and hospitals who want to move or expand need to demonstrate that there's a good reason to do so. That cuts down on expensive entrepreneurial medicine, in which doctors build out, say, a specialty cardiology unit and then, magically, it turns out that the area needed a lot more heart surgeries than it had previously been getting. And that, in turn, lowers costs. But it's hard to imagine any similar command-and-control solution being adopted on the national level."http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/in_health_care_more_is_not_alw.html

Obamania (cont.)

TW: Have not had one of these in awhile. We were in Hawaii last spring and saw these, really meant to pick one up but failed to do so.

Oscar Rogers Knows What Needs to be Done

This week, I'll be posting my favorites from 2009 as posted by Mr. Blogger.

My all time favorite post follows - nobody tells it better than Oscar




ok - this post was from October 2008 but it's still my favorite...

Hollowing Out Of American Manufacturing

TW: Folks lament the alleged hollowing out of American manufacturing but is that true? Economies evolve and thankfully become more productive. As the chart portrays manufacturing as a % of our GDP has remained constant but the number of folks needed to achieve that level has plummeted. Rest assured many things continue to be made in the good, old USofA but much more efficiently than in the past. This creates dislocation, angst and change but our manufacturing base remains vibrant.

Classic Posts: Humor 2009

TW: Ms. Blogger and Mr. Blogger are picking our favorites from each other's posts over the coming week. I will pick a post from each of Ms. Blogger's daily themes. Today is "Humor". Ms. Blogger posted many humorous photos over the year, I have selected several of my favorites.

Dick "the Toe" Morris' 2009 Predictions

TW: For shits and grins I get Dick Morris' email screeds. That Morris once worked for Bill Clinton is a huge blemish on Clinton's legacy. That Morris HATES Hillary Clinton speaks well for her. Morris has rooted against Obama with a full throated roar (he is on Fox regularly) since Obama took the Democratic nomination.

His type cheer against America if it would help his now conservative soulmates. He made a couple of predictions about this time last year. I kept them assuming they would not age well. What is most striking is the memes the tea-baggers and much of the Republican leadership have pounded for the past year were not organic based upon evolving events; they were pre-baked, honed and ready to roll even BEFORE Obama actually took the oath.

From Dick Morris from January 9, 2009:
"Now I want to turn the crystal ball to the war on terror and foreign affairs and make my predictions for the new year.

Obama has given power to men and women who really don't believe terrorism is much of a problem. They implicitly share the European view that an attack here or there is not worth turning what they regard as constitutional guarantees on their heads. The result is that we will be vastly more vulnerable and have a good chance of being hit again soon."

"The politics of 2009 will be dominated by a continuation and deepening of the global Depression. Under the guise of stimulating the economy, look for Obama to pursue a radical, socialist agenda that will bring America into conformity with the government domination of health care and the economy that prevails in the European Union. When the dust clears, the economy will still be in the tank. The new president's stimulation packages will do little or nothing to abate the depression, but they will transform American life and politics. For his part, Obama will take advantage of his built-in majorities in Congress to pass his agenda, but will suffer rapidly dropping ratings. By the end of the year, he will be as radioactive as Bush is today."

click to enlarge

Sunday Funnies

The Answer

The Question: Why do contruction and remodeling jobs always run over budget?

Pet Peeve: Snow Blowers

TW: Above is a legit use of a snow blower, a foot plus of powder and a fairly significant area to cover. On the other hand, are those idiots like our neighboring building who when a half inch of snow falls feel the need to bring out the blowers. The noises from a blower when richocheting off high rises can be thourougly annoying at 6 am or 10 pm etc. Just an observation.

Saturday's Animal Shots

It's a Small World

Great example of Tilt Shift in video.

From Christoph Schaarschmidt

I shot this scenes in the Saxon Switzerland. This is a National Park in the east of Germany along the river Elbe. In this clip you can see the Fortress Königstein, the Bastei, the Lilienstein, Stolpen, Bad Schandau and the Brebisch Gate in the Czech Republic. I shot about 12000 pictures in five days with my Canon 400D.

Music: Rocky Votolato, Uppers aren´t Necessary

Or Not!

TW: Conventional wisdom, may be widespread but it is certainly fallible...

From Foreign Policy mag:
"On this day in 1999...
Lou Dobbs was a respected, middle-of-the-road journalist.
The prospect of achieving Middle East peace seemed imminent.
Beltway pundits believed Al Gore and George W. Bush were centrists who would govern similarly.
You could meet your loved ones at their arrival gate.
There were more than 2 million Christians living in Iraq.
Osama bin Laden was living with his family in a compound in Kandahar.
China's GDP was $1.4 trillion, half of Germany's.
Israel still had troops in Lebanon.
Nobody had ever heard of Somali pirates.
Something called Inktomi was the world's largest search engine.
Everybody was clamoring for the new file-sharing program Napster.
We worried Y2K would bring the global banking infrastructure to its knees.
Illinois State Senator Barack Obama campaigned for a spot in the House of Representatives.
First Lady Hillary Clinton campaigned for a spot in the Senate.
Wasilla, Alaska, Mayor Sarah Palin considered running for state-wide office.
India had fewer than a billion citizens.
Strongman Slobodan Milosevic still ruled in Yugoslavia.
The human genome had not yet been mapped.
The Concorde flew between Paris and New York.
Alan Greenspan was widely heralded as the world's greatest financial thinker.
Boris Yeltsin was preparing to step down and make way for the young pragmatist Vladimir Putin.
The Dow Jones closed at 11,484. (Today, it's at 10,545.)
The United States had a record federal budget surplus."
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/29/food_for_thought

Happy New Year

Some thoughts to help you kick the new year off:

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
~ Oscar Wilde

New Year's Day...now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
~ Mark Twain

An optimist stays up to see the New Year in. A pessimist waits to make sure the old one leaves.
~ Bill Vaughan

Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?
~ Ogden Nash