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).

Maybe Carter Was Not As Bad As You Thought!

The thought has ever so briefly flit­tered across my brain on a few occa­sions over the years.

Where were all these micro brew­eries when I was grow­ing up?

My fam­i­ly drank a lot of beer. But it was nev­er a micro brew, it was Bud or Shiltz or some oth­er major brand. Years lat­er, as an adult I see or hear about micro brews with regularity.

It turns out that beer drinkers have Jim­my Carter to thank for that!!

Who would of thunk it?! I’m guess there’s a few peo­ple who would have great dif­fi­cul­ty rec­on­cil­ing the “Carter is the worst pres­i­dent ever!” belief with this info.

Oh well. Life is hard sometimes!

Well, It Is True

While in a shop in Sarato­ga Springs, New York, I came across this jar of peanut butter.

The label says Peanut Buzz. And what is the Buzz?

Research sug­gests peanuts have more pro­tein than any oth­er legume or nut.

I would think that the com­par­a­tive lev­els of pro­tein in legumes and nuts is well estab­lished, so I find it odd that research only “sug­gests” peanuts have more pro­tein. But maybe it is so.*

Next up is

Peanuts may help improve HDL/​LDL ratio

Again, I find the “may help” word­ing odd­ly vague. But, again, maybe it is so. No men­tion of research here.

Peanut eaters can have lean­er bodies

This is most cer­tain­ly true. I am cer­tain that peanut eaters can have lean­er bod­ies. I am equal­ly cer­tain that they can have fat bod­ies, and medi­um bodies.

Peanuts have been referred to as Moth­er Nature’s “mul­ti-vit­a­min”

Real­ly? Some­one once referred to peanuts as a mul­ti-vit­a­min? Here is the nutri­tion label on this jar of peanut butter:

My apolo­gies for the blur. Let’s see, we can ignore the fat, cho­les­terol, sodi­um, carb, fiber, sug­ar and pro­tein con­tent since mul­ti-vit­a­mins do not nor­mal­ly sup­ply those items. That brings us to vit­a­min A (0% DV), Cal­ci­um (2% DV), Vit­a­min C (0% DV), Iron (4% DV). If your mul­ti-vit­a­min label even remote­ly resem­bles those num­bers, you are get­ting ripped off.

It is fun how the label begins with claims that may well be true, but states them ten­ta­tive­ly. By the time the last state­ment comes along, it seems to have as much author­i­ty as the pre­ced­ing claims. And since it seems a near cer­tain­ty that some­time, some­where, some­one once said that peanuts are natures multi-vitamin…

I did not buy this prod­uct so I have no idea how good or bad it may be. I have no idea if it is pro­duced by a small Sarato­ga Springs com­pa­ny or some mas­sive cor­po­ra­tion. But I do know that the label is right there with the worst cor­po­rate bs scam crap out there. Which is why I did not buy the product.

*Note that there are two lev­els of uncer­tain­ty here.

Everywhere a Sign

As we drove through New York last week, we came across some road con­struc­tion. It is sum­mer after all and this is to be expect­ed. I do not remem­ber what road we were on, but it is a four lane divid­ed high­way. The left lanes on both sides of the road were closed. As the pic­ture shows, the tem­po­rary con­crete bar­ri­er was set up and the shoul­der con­vert­ed to the right lane.

Note the sign:

“RIGHT LANE MUST USE SHOULDER”

What else is there? If a vehi­cle is not on the shoul­der, it is not in the right lane. If it is in the right lane, it is already on the shoulder.

And this sign is installed every few hun­dred feet. Just to the left of the speed lim­it sign the bot­tom of the next “Right Lane Must Use Shoul­der” sign is vis­i­ble peek­ing out from behind the green info sign.

“Who Wins? Oh yeah, them too.”

Yes­ter­day I was lis­ten­ing to Per­for­mance Today on NPR. They played a selec­tion per­formed by a group of female musi­cians who were all cur­rent­ly incar­cer­at­ed in a Texas prison. Along with the per­for­mance was a bit of time talk­ing about the pro­gram that teach­es inmates how to play musi­cal instruments.

Some­one from the Texas prison sys­tem was being inter­viewed and he talked about the 60% recidi­vism rate in Texas and how when an inmate expe­ri­ences suc­cess play­ing the music this leads to more pos­i­tive behav­ior and low­ers the recidi­vism rate. He called it a win-win.

Now, dear read­er, you might be nod­ding your head and think­ing indeed it is a win-win. The state of Texas expe­ri­ences less recidi­vism which real­ly means less crime and less mon­ey spent incar­cer­at­ing peo­ple and the inmates win by find­ing a path to a life inside the law.

Ahh, but that is not what the man meant. He imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed up with a clar­i­fi­ca­tion. The win-win he was talk­ing about was, yes, the state of Texas and the Texas prison sys­tem! Yeah!!!

Pluperfect

Well, the umpire blew what should have been the final call of the game and per­fec­tion is ruined, at least as far as the record book is con­cerned. My ques­tion is does this leave Arman­do Galar­ra­ga with an accom­plish­ment nev­er before achieved?

A per­fect game is 27 outs with no one reach­ing base. Galar­ra­ga and the Tigers retired 28 with no one reach­ing base (if you ignore the umpire’s error).

Since it seems that instant replay is only a mat­ter of time for base­ball, Galar­ra­ga’s plu­per­fect game may “for­ev­er” stand as a unique accomplishment.