Basic Human Decency
mikethemadbiologist | May 31, 2010When it comes to war, we should spend more time listening to those who have seen it. With that in mind, I bring you this by Andy Rooney, from last year's Memorial Day:
Amazingly, Rooney received death threats over this piece.
That explains a lot, actually.
mikethemadbiologist | May 21, 2010Contrary to what some might think, I'm not opposed to investment bank and bankers, I'm just opposed to the current crop of banks and bankers. But even more than usurious middle men, the guys who really make my head explode are the flat-out speculators--they serve, even on their best days, no useful purpose whatsoever. And thanks to the recent stock market computer glitch that caused the Dow to temporarily dive ten percent, speculators known as high-frequency traders are finally getting noticed (italics mine):
Depending on whose estimates you believe, high-frequency traders account for 40 to…
mikethemadbiologist | May 7, 2010
(from here)
A while ago, Ezra Klein posted an interview with an anonymous Harvard graduate who works for Goldman Sachs ("Why do Harvard kids head to Wall Street?"). Before I get to the interview, I'll answer the question--and it might not be what you think it is.
Ultimately, students from elite colleges have been trained (and, yes, I'm using the same word one uses for a dog) to jump through hoops that authority figures set for them. These are not "the road less travelled" types. Their entire lives, from kindergarten on, are focused on getting to the next round, the next level. Throughout…
mikethemadbiologist | April 23, 2010By way of Echidne, I came across this article about WellPoint's cancellation of insurance policies belonging to women with breast cancer (italics mine):
Shortly after they were diagnosed with breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. There was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. And there was Patricia Reilling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky....
The women paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, neither had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies…
mikethemadbiologist | April 7, 2010If you haven't heard by now, a Fulton, Mississippi high school student who wanted to bring her same-sex date to the high school prom was tricked and 'invited' to a 'special event':
McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back -- she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn't much to keep an eye on.
"They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them," McMillen says. "The one that I went to…
mikethemadbiologist | February 27, 2010Many of my ScienceBloglings have rightly called out animal rights terrorists who target researchers' children. They are absolutely right to do so. The one issue I have is that I often read something along the lines of "Terrorism is wrong, regardless of if you're for or against animal rights..." Actually, I'm not willing to disregard that at all. In the midst of condemning these thugs, we need to remember something very important: the consequences of the ideas that non-violent animal rights advocates hold are still reprehensible. Outsourced to ScienceBlogling Mark (italics mine):…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2010A recent question posed by NY Times columnist demonstrates just how far to the Palinist right our political and social discourse has shifted:
I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to…
mikethemadbiologist | January 18, 2010
Image by Bettmann/CORBIS
With ten percent unemployment, and nearly eighteen percent underemployment--and much of the political establishment unconcerned about this--Martin Luther King's passion for economic justice sadly is still relevant. What is forgotten about Kings--often willfully--is that he was an advocate for racial and economic justice. From a speech he gave to striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968 (italics mine):
My dear friends, my dear friend James Lawson, and all of these dedicated and distinguished ministers of the Gospel assembled here tonight, to all of…
mikethemadbiologist | January 12, 2010One of the claims that has been going around is that healthcare in Massachusetts is affordable; in fact, MIT economist Paul Jonathan Gruber, who has come under fire for conflicts-of-interest, has made this claim:
In considering affordability for a group, we need to establish a sensible benchmark whereby insurance is considered affordable if "most of" a group can afford it. We can disagree about what "most of" means, but it would be wrong to define "most of" only as "very close to 100%."
Well, that's good to know. Because most humans, as opposed to MIT economists, would think, when it comes…
mikethemadbiologist | November 26, 2009Remember that it is far better to eat turkey than to be eaten by them...
On a more serious note, if you have enough to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, consider giving to your local food bank. If you're in the Boston area, these people do good work.
mikethemadbiologist | November 1, 2009Some thoughts on the Theology of Jerks. Earlier this week, there was some minor amusement over Christian scholar Richard Beck's claim, at his blog Experimental Theology, that Christians (presumably he means fundamentalists) are lousy tippers:
Take, for example, how Christians tip and behave in restaurants. If you have ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the reputation of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Millions of Christians go to lunch after church on Sundays and their behavior is abysmal. The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 22, 2009Blogger Maha is one of my favorite political bloggers. She brings a unique perspective to politics, and her background is really interesting. Recently, like a lot of people, her income has been hit (although it seems to have bounced back a bit). Nonetheless, her co-op association is jerking her around, and essentially trying to steal all of the equity she built up in her home:
There it was, stuck on the door to my co-op apartment with chewing gum -- a court summons. "Notice of petition to recover real property non-payment," it said.
This had to be a mistake. Yes, I had gotten three months…
mikethemadbiologist | October 22, 2009This is why private insurance companies should die--or, at the very least, no American should be forced to give these parasites his or her money:
Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.
Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.
Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that…
How Is the Proposed Oklahoma Law to Publicly Post Details of Abortions Online Not a HIPAA Violation?
mikethemadbiologist | October 14, 2009Because nothing says freedom like government shaming regarding a private healthcare decision:
Move over, Hester Prynne:
On Nov. 1, a law in Oklahoma will go into effect that will collect personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and post them on a public website. Implementing the measure will "cost $281,285 the first year and $256,285 each subsequent year." Here are the first eight questions that women will have to reveal:
Date of abortion
County in which abortion performed
Age of mother
Marital status of mother
Race of mother
Years of education of…
mikethemadbiologist | October 11, 2009A while ago, I discussed how 'fiscal conservatism'--that is, radical deficit reductionism--is an extremist ideology, not a moderate one, and that radical deficit reductionism has real-world consequences for people's lives. Steve Rhodes generalizes the problem by describing the discussion we are not allowed to have:
We are not allowed to discuss an economic structure that keeps those on the bottom at the bottom - on purpose.
When the unemployment rate, for example, gets "too low," the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to slow down the economy.
In other words, the Federal Reserve - at the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 5, 2009The Washington Post editors have been gloriously harrumphing about increased need for objectivity. Ken Houghton at The Angry Bear notes:
But when your Ombudsman claims that your readers "typically demand coverage that is unfailingly neutral," and cites as an example of "crossing the line" one of your reporters making a statement of fact:
"We can incur all sorts of federal deficits for wars and what not," Raju Narisetti wrote on his Twitter feed. "But we have to promise not to increase it by $1 for healthcare reform? Sad."
There is no purpose for your organization to even claim it publishes…
mikethemadbiologist | September 10, 2009...what he said. I was going to write about how Rep. Joe Wilson, who during last night's presidential address shouted "You lie!", shouldn't be criticized for being rude or uncivil. After all, if Obama had advocated sending left-handed people to gas chambers, I hope someone would have the courage to shout him down. But then I read Thers' "I Think You're an Asshole, And I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Act Like an Asshole, But You're Still an Asshole, Asshole" and realized he already said what needed to be said:
...I honestly do not think anyone from the Bush administration should be…
mikethemadbiologist | September 7, 2009In one of his last speeches before Martin Luther King was murdered, he spoke to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. It seems appropriate for the day:
My dear friends, my dear friend James Lawson, and all of these dedicated and distinguished ministers of the Gospel assembled here tonight, to all of the sanitation workers and their families, and to all of my brothers and sisters, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be in Memphis tonight, to see you here in such large and enthusiastic numbers...
If you will judge anything here in this struggle, you're commanding…
mikethemadbiologist | September 6, 2009I bet you didn't think life insurance policies could be securitized. You would be very wrong:
The bankers plan to buy "life settlements," life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash -- $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to "securitize" these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.
The earlier the policyholder dies…
mikethemadbiologist | September 3, 2009If you show up and boast about how you would shoot people in the head, your addresses and other things get entered into the spam filter. It's my blog, that's how it goes down here.