Thursday, January 14. 2010
 The history of cranes and tower cranes here.
h/t, Samizdata
I haven’t been enthusiastic about prior conservative free-market approaches as a solution to healthcare spending's pressure on the economy or individuals. Conservative proposals are, rather, a mitigator of overuse leading to overspending. Through “more skin in the game,” conservative proposals cause users to think twice about how much is really necessary.
The liberal approaches, by contrast, after the application of their best minds, are now proven to go in the opposite direction from cost reduction or improved healthcare. They lead to higher costs and just benefit a fraction of the uninsured, while vastly increasing the power of the government to impose its rationing generalizations upon individual needs – which vary -- while further insulating users from sensible involvement.
With HT to Instapundit, “The High Cost of No Price” from the American Enterprise Institute.
Economists have shown that if a good’s price is zero or decreasing, then the demand for this good will likely increase. In 2008, consumers were only directly responsible for 11.9 percent of total national healthcare expenditures, down from 43 percent in 1965, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This means that someone other than consumers pays roughly 88 percent of all healthcare costs, giving consumers little incentive to mind costs and much incentive to over-consume.
From the NIMH:
The search over the past decade for genes behind mental illness has led to the realization that mental disorders are not discrete conditions with specific causes. Rather, they are the result of interactions between risk factors that affect development; psychiatric symptoms can arise from many causes and are more interrelated than current disease models allow. By 2020, this insight, which has been slow to take hold, will have transformed how doctors understand and treat psychiatric conditions.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Anon, from Theo's old farmer quotes. Ain't that the truth.
Like that word. Re the Met, at Classical:
I suppose if Christians want parity in respect, we should be recruiting our own brigades of ax-swingers and splodeydopes, but I did a little reading and apparently our founder's view on disrespecting our creed was some p***y-a** nonsense about "turning the other cheek" (like that's going to strike fear into the hearts of infidels). And as far as I can tell, none of our sects have any proviso for a bevy of pliant virgins on higher planes in the event of pious detonation. So Jihad For Jesus is going to be an uphill climb, to say the least. Meanwhile, I guess we'll have to settle for the smug moral superiority of suffering figurative slings and arrows in both cheeks.
Our friend Roger gets it. Related: Red has already won in Massachusettes Massachsittes MA. Related: Seating Mass. Senate winner could be delayed. Of course.
You want some Moslem cartoons? Here's one.
Full Body Scans to Double as Annual Checkups
Pethokoukis: 9 reasons why the Dec. jobs report is bad news for Dems. Their policies are job-killers.
Google is getting fed up with China. China does not trust its people.
Who predicted this? Obama Wants $33 Billion More for War. Guy is a cowboy warmonger.
Game-Changer: Why Did Reporters Keep Silent About Edwards? And Bill Clinton too. They're in the tank. Duh.
Thompson's Remants of an Army. Story of the 1842 Afghanistan battle here.
Wednesday, January 13. 2010
Identify the perpetrators of atrocities upon children as sociopaths or whatever (see Dr. Joy Bliss' post below), and the words don't come near the horrors they commit, which are monstrous, whether during the Holocaust or today in many countries.
Here's a photo from a group of 41 children, ages 3-13, plus ten adult staff the Nazis tore from their refuge near Lyon, France on April 6, 1944. The children were sent to Auschwitz and murdered, as were the staff.
Up to 1.5-million children were murdered in the death camps, about 1.2-million of them Jews, the others Roma or handicapped.
Holocaust by Barbara Sonek
We played, we laughed
we were loved.
We were ripped from the arms of our parents
and thrown into the fire.
We were nothing more than children.
We had a future.
We were going to be lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers.
We had dreams, then we had no hope.
We were taken away in the dead of night
like cattle in cars, no air to breathe
smothering, crying, starving, dying.
Separated from the world
to be no more.
From the ashes, hear our plea
This atrocity to mankind can not happen again.
Remember us, for we were the children
whose dreams and lives were stolen away.
Here's a photo of a few of the very few children who survived to liberation.
We see similar photos today of children elsewhere in the world who suffer. Remember and do more than repeat the mantra "Never Again."
More info about the once happy children in the first photo at this site.
HT: My good friend "Charlite", a righteous Gentile.
Old Haiti has needed our prayers for many years, but they sure need them now. Their doctors are praying too, and sometimes that's all one can do. Or the most one can do.
I have been thinking quite a bit about Sociopathy (aka Antisocial Personality, aka Psychopathy, aka in the young "Conduct Disorder") lately. People without a conscience who view others as objects of gratification or as tools to be used. I have missed the diagnosis several times over the past few years, to my regret. Many experts are known to miss it until something happens to wave the red flag in front of your face.
It's not just an important diagnosis for us shrinks to make: it's important for everybody out in the world. 2-3% of humans probably have enough sociopathic traits to be of concern in life. It's a strange partially genetic adaptation. Some end up as leaders and moguls, many end up addicts, dead, or in jail. Sociopathy knows no economic, cultural, or ethnic boundaries.
What is this "condition"?
It's a tricky thing, sociopathy. It has been well-described from many points of view. We analysts often think of it as being based in an absence of empathy - an inability to experience others as other than as objects to be exploited, used, predated upon, etc. An inner coldness and calculatingness towards others, but not to be confused with obsessional personalities who simply protect their emotions, and not be confused with those with immoral or amoral impulses - everybody has those.
However, successful sociopaths learn to create a warm, caring, engaged, and often charming presentation of themselves to the world. Very successful and smart sociopaths learn how to live honest lives and to channel their talents, guile and wiles into honest paths.
Full-blown sociopathy is generally considered an untreatable and incurable condition. I am not convinced that that is true - but I think it requires special methods which are outisde of regular Psychiatry. Sociopathic traits are far more common than the supposed 2% of the population that are said to be full sociopaths. I am not going to write an essay on this complicated topic, but will just offer some links for those who are interested:
Wiki has a simple introduction to the topic
A classic book by Cleckley: The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So Called Psychopathic Personality
An interesting paper: THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF SOCIOPATHY: AN INTEGRATED EVOLUTIONARY MODEL
I have more links on the topic, but no more time right now.
A quote from Yuval Levin's Capitalism at NRO:
Part of the problem I have with some versions of the libertarian case is that they take capitalism (if not classical liberalism more generally) to be an argument against the need for restraints on our appetites and passions, rather than an argument for the possibility of such restraints — to be an argument for libertinism rather than liberty. I’m with Edmund Burke, who said that “men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”
Is the MSM beginning to get it? From Jack Cafferty via Watts:
As the debate continues about global warming, the month of December was the 14th coldest in 115 years in the United States… and some scientists insist the earth is entering a cooling trend.
- Wind chills brought temperatures in the Dakotas to 50 degrees below zero, while record cold in parts of Florida is damaging some of the orange crops, and South Carolina called an early end to shrimping season.
- Parts of Canada have seen actual temperatures of 30 below zero… And freezing temperatures and record snowfalls are pounding parts of Asia and Europe too.
- Britain has experienced the worst snowfalls in half a century.
- In India – it’s estimated at least 100 people have died due to the cold temperatures… with dozens more killed in Bangladesh.
- In China and South Korea, heavy snow and unusually cold weather have brought chaos to travelers – blocking roads and trains, canceling flights. After one recent blizzard in Beijing – officials had more than 300-thousand people clearing the streets.
Meanwhile some of the world’s top climate scientists suggest this winter is only the start of a worldwide trend toward cooler weather, which could last for 20 to 30 years. They base their predictions on changes in water temperatures in the oceans
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
Anon., from Theo's Old Farmer quotes
How often have we heard complaints about the inappropriate cheesecake on Maggie's Farm? Countless times.
So here's some beefcake instead - Scott Brown, MA Senate candidate, as a law student (via a piece at Powerline). The photo should help with the gal vote, don't you think?
Betsy has a very good update on the MA race. Also today: Union plans major ad buy for Coakley. We also note the conspicuous absence of a major national politician to support the Dem in this campaign. The O not invited, apparently.
We support Scott Brown, even if we enviously resent his good looks:
Tuesday, January 12. 2010
From VDH on The Way Our World Works (h/t, Am Digest - with Randy Newman's Short People):
...those on the left are moralists, smarter people who pass up their own personal agendas to help the community. They think of society, not self, and so when they err, they do it under stress, in accidental fashion, and with no lasting significance — not like their selfish Neanderthal cousin conservatives, for whom transgression is a valuable window into their flawed souls. Bushisms became a media pastime, but no one suggests that a president who says Cinco de Quatro, or 57 states, or references the “Austrian” language is a Dan Quayle wrestling with potato.
The Eclipse. A little too flashy, d'ya think?
If you’ve never had freedom taken from you, it’s easier to take it for granted. If you have, freedom becomes more precious and vital to survival and advancement. This is of much more than a matter of personal freedoms within Unfree countries. The despots ruling them also pose major threats to other countries.
For the 4th year in a row, according to Freedom House’s invaluable annual analyses since 1972, freedom has declined in the world. One can only hope that the Obamites are paying attention, as there is more evidence of they not giving much of a damn.
In 2009, declines for freedom were registered in 40 countries, representing 20 percent of the world’s polities…. The year also featured a drop in the number of electoral democracies from 119 to 116, the lowest figure since 1995.
Still:
By absolute historical standards, the overall state of freedom in the world has improved over the last two decades. Many more countries were in the Free category and were designated as electoral democracies in 2009 than in 1989, and the majority of countries that made major progress 20 years ago have retained those improvements….
But over the last four years, the dominant pattern has been one of growing restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of expression and association in authoritarian settings, and a failure to continue democratic progress in previously improving countries due to unchecked corruption and weaknesses in the rule of law.
Freedom House doesn’t measure promises or commentators’ perceived portents. Freedom House sticks to what actually exists. For example, 88% of the people in the MidEast and North Africa region were in Unfree countries. Check out this map: http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Map_MENA.pdf Note the only speck of freedom is in tiny Israel. Wonder why the rulers of Islamic countries and their Unfree allies concentrate on eliminating Israel’s threat, by comparison alone, to their satrapies lack of freedoms or economic advancement.
There’s much more detail in the Freedom House reports.
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