Spelunking the Universe
Posts tagged Sickness and Health
The Cost of Thought
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
In Response to this Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/health/policy/27care.html?_r=1&hp
There comes a time when a country such as ours realizes that greed has caused serious problems. In this case the cost of medical school has (without just cause) gone skyward for many years. As is stated in the article the average medical student ends up owing 140,000 dollars by the end of the ordeal. This with interest is a fantastically large amount of cash for a job that should be thrown at people (there is no such thing as too many doctors).
That’s the problem. When it can be cheaper to become a lawyer than a doctor and with every new bundle of lawyers you have a new bundle of ridiculous lawsuits that make the cost of being a doctor go even higher. This means that more talented people become lawyers and more lawyers compounds the problem till you…well…till you reach where we are (and may continue going).
The system doesn’t work and I can’t recall a time when it did work. Insurance rarely pays a fair enough amount and those without insurance are hard pressed to get any care at all. It’s an unfortunate reality check that will hopefully be alleviated. Health care should be one of three primary concerns of any civilization. If it is not that civilization is not doing the simplest of its jobs well.
As I heard on television earlier. “Oh yeah I said it.” The US is holding up like a house with termites, we’ll see how long till an earthquake or strong breeze hits.
How to sell a lie.
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
There are two pieces of lingo that are incessantly abused in commercials for two of the US’s biggest addictions. Movies and Medications. Sometimes using the latter to enhance the former. They both are generally overlooked and in some cases mistranslated by consumers.
The first is the phrase “Based on a True Story.” Now at first glance one might think “Oh neato banditto something like this really happened.” However they have already coined a phrase for when an event actually happened which is “Based on Actual Events.” The difference is subtle, and indeed both of these can lead to extreme exaggerations however the latter tends to have less than the former. The thing about a story is that it is always true if it has ever been told, as it stands even just making up the story for the movie makes it a true story. There is no such thing as a false story, unless we are to count stories that don’t exist and frankly how exactly do you tell a story that doesn’t exist? This “Haunting in Connecticut” is a great modern example. They could have ran with “Actual events” because indeed one of the many families that lived in the house banked on some hokey ghost story (which conveniently paid for their sick son’s medical bills). But they people who made this movie aren’t idiots and they know that it didn’t happen. Now if you just go to see movies for the enjoyment factor this doesn’t matter for you however for the throngs of people debating online how ghosts exist and using this movie as a citation (far more common than it may sound).
The second of my two peeves is actually a little more dramatic. What in the Earth is up with medications having commercials that only show (bad) actors or (and this is the kicker) mentioning either softly or only in size 8 text at the bottom of the screen “Results are not Typical.” If noticeable results are not typical then the medication should not be advertised as if it does anything noticeable. This is the most blunt example of marketing without regard for the safety of your fellow human. There is little evidence for the long term use of just about any modern medication however we find little worry in mixing half a dozen different chemicals and downing them daily.
A small change in the environment can kill the animals surviving there, one would think that jamming high levels of alien chemicals into ones own body would hardly result in merry returns. Perhaps its an ignorance that someday will be alleviated by a long education in medicine but for now I find it disturbing. It is borderline terrifying to watch such a large number of people globally ingesting substances they (and even in some cases their doctors) have little understanding of.
But that’s the thing about the miracle pill. It reminds me of something that thankfully the internet mega-resource Wikipedia had cited in full:
The source of Big Lie technique, from Chapter 10 of Mein Kampf:
… in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
—Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1]
Inanition and You
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Well to be fair it’s more a case of Inanition and myself however referencing old posters or instructional videos tends to get a laugh from people old enough to appreciate how terrible the particular thing one is referencing was.
I looked today at the word of the day and found that it was oddly appropriate. For those that read this post at a later time the word is Inanition which is defined by the friendly folks at reference.com as:
inanition \in-uh-NISH-uhn\, noun:
1. The condition or quality of being empty.
2. Exhaustion, as from lack of nourishment.
3. Lack of vitality or spirit.
For those that might be curious as how this pertains to the current state of affairs on this side of the internet it’s pretty simple. I have chronic insomnia which anyone that knows me has a pretty good knowledge of, last night I was blessed with 2 hours of sleep (between the hours of 10 PM and 12 AM). It was certainly an unpleasant event but it’s better than nothing.
However! This is not supposed to be a random blog (folks get enough of that on facebook and twitter) and there was another point that arose today that fits the wonderful word of the day. Currently in the US political sphere (always a sphere) there is much banter about earmarks and while I am not here to berate or support earmarks there is something that has aggravated the hell out of me with the entire martyr march of folks who are against it.
Whenever a politician (like say John McCain since he’s the particular one I saw ranting) banters on about the cost of a project, like for instance, 1 million dollars for research into a locust like insect that has in the words of a USA Today Reporter:
Sometimes the migration involves only small bands. Their numbers, however, gradually increase over several years and may reach densities of 100 per square yard — outbreak proportions. Then the crickets migrate in hordes (ten to fifty thousand) to foothills, rangeland, and crops. The high densities may persist for 5 to 20 years. At the peak of the 1938 infestation, Mormon crickets wiped out 19 million acres in 11 states.
Run George! The Cricket is coming for you!
(Source: Web.Mit.Edu)
Now when he says that we are spending 1 million dollars on research it sounds like a money sink and in fact anyone who doesn’t take the 8.23 seconds of time opening their Firefox and Googling (should officially be a verb soon) the topic of Mormon Crickets returns some startling information (that is pretty much unanimous). These insects in particular can start out relatively unassuming and grow to massive proportions utterly devastating the surrounding landscape (and you know…food supplies). In 2000 these devious little bastards cost the state of Utah alone 22 million dollars in damage that means that a single state (you know of the 50 we have) lost 22 times the cost of this bill because of a similar bill not going into effect sooner than 2000 and addressing the issue. In 2003 these little guys caused at least 25 million dollars. So over the course of a single presidential term we lost 47 times the cost of this bill.
Indeed the quality of our politicians (in uncomfortably large amounts) and there motivations are in a state of Inanition. They lack substance and are frankly utterly wasteful uses of the television frequencies that they transmit over (for CSPAN and such). Telling someone the cost of a bill means absolutely nothing without equally telling the estimated return on that investment. When someone hears 1 million dollars in expenditures they feel cheated until they realize that it could have already potentially saved them almost 50 million dollars. I’m quite certain if just about any of John McCain’s(and to be fair anyone else he just happened to be the one I saw ranting) complaints would fall utterly flat if we examined the estimated return on the investments. I’m relatively confident that even the lowest expected return would still be quite promising for a good deal of the planned expenses on the bill.
If we overlook potentially outbreak (I like the word pandemic but I think that’s misused) prone insects to roam free without any sort of research or control we risk losing a whole lot more than monetary resources. Indeed if large quantities of crop lands were lost I’m sure that people would be all the more used to the term Inanition because they’d be suffering from it.
It will be the smallest of things that fells the largest of things with the utmost grace and swiftness, the second we assume that size denotes importance is the second we surrender to the most deadly of adversaries.