Month: September 2010

Who Puts a Value on a Life?

I am not sure (but I think so) if it made it into Health Care Reform, but there is no deny­ing that many lib­er­als want what the right referred to as “death pan­els”. Of course, not death pan­els, but a method of deter­mi­nat­ing what treat­ments are not effec­tive, includ­ing treat­ments that give lit­tle val­ue for a high price.

Con­ser­v­a­tives con­tin­ue to insist that the first Health Care Reform that should be passed is mal­prac­tice reform includ­ing lim­its on jury awards. Pre­sum­ably, such lim­its would include cas­es where death was the result.

Who wants to put a dol­lar val­ue on a life?

Straw Poll Picks Pence for Pres!!

At this week’s Val­ues Vot­er Sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton the win­ner of the straw poll for Pres­i­dent in 2012 was Mike Pence!!

This is just as I was begin­ning to think that Pence was more inter­est­ed in being Major­i­ty Leader in the House than being President.

Note that the win­ner of the Vice Pres­i­dent straw poll was also Pence, so the win goes to the sec­ond place Palin!

Yup. That’s a tick­et we can live with! Pence/​Palin!!

I Made an Appearence in xkcd!!!!

You might not notice the resem­blance (espe­cial­ly if you do not know me!), but that is me in this com­ic.

It dri­ves me NUTS when I ask for an address and I get direc­tions instead of an address. Once upon a time this might have made a bit of sense, but no more. The direc­tions I get off of the inter­net are stun­ning­ly accu­rate. I’m sure there are exam­ples of mis­takes in such direc­tions, but I’ve been vic­tim to mis­takes in the direc­tions from the per­son who lives at the des­ti­na­tion (and I usu­al­ly fail to see the hydrant paint­ed like a clown.…)

OK, the guy in the com­ic is using GPS and I do not have GPS. This is just to keep me from suing.

Besides, GPS is not always accu­rate. When my son and his wife came to vis­it at our new house, his GPS announced that they had arrived when they were still a block away. Good thing they had the address.

:)

The Inheritance of Beliefs!

Satoshi Kanaza­wa is a blog­ger at Psy­chol­o­gy Today. He blogs about evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy. Not every­thing he has post­ed has sound­ed right to me, but some of it seems OK. But enough is enough.

the fact that Barack Obama’s father was a Mus­lim Kenyan, descend­ed from a long line of Mus­lims, will remain true until the day he dies, and noth­ing he ever does in his life can change half of his genes that he inher­it­ed from his father. His genes are for keeps. The fact that he has attend­ed Chris­t­ian church for the past 20 years is not going to change that…Obama is still as (half) Mus­lim as the day he was born.

It would seem that Mr. Kanaza­wa con­fus­es eth­nic­i­ty with reli­gious belief. And yes, Mr. Kanaza­wa is talk­ing about reli­gion here…

34% state [Oba­ma] is a Chris­t­ian (down from 48% in March 2009). It is dis­heart­en­ing to know that 34% of the pop­u­la­tion has a dim under­stand­ing of human genet­ics.

This does open a door to an out if and when peo­ple become embar­rassed about claim­ing that Oba­ma is Mus­lim. Now they can say that they sim­ply meant that his eth­nic­i­ty is Mus­lim (although I do not believe that Mus­lims con­sti­tute an eth­nic­i­ty, but why be con­cerned with details at this point).