So I just raved about the Fleshtones. Well, they are going to be part of this nutty Cavestomp 3 day rockfest in New York City. Work and other stuff prevents me from going – bitter fate. But you, dear reader, may have the cash and the freedom to get to this thing. Cavestomp will feature the mighty, the legendary, the incendiary Sonics! It will be their first and only show in 35 years. Total rock madness. If you go to the Cavestomp link above it plays a huge string of Best of the Sonics, the Kings of 60s Punk, and the Sonics own MySpace page, there are a few more classics … . If you missed them 40 or so years ago, here is your big second chance …
Month: September 2007
A Blogroll Aggregation & Aimless Musings
Robert Fulford sees Naomi Klein, “a friend to Hezbollah, an enemy of logic,” in battle with the Chicago boys. We are not surprised by the winner. Not that her technique can’t be exasperatingly effective with those who actually try to engage: “Her rule: When facts conflict with theory, change the subject.” (From A&L)
Health Care and Fixed Costs
There are many health care plans being proposed to “fix” the growth in medical costs in the United States. Each of these plans has different elements but I haven’t really seen the particular linked issue addressed that I am going to speak of in this blog post.
I make a point of reviewing my medical bills. When you have surgery, for example, you receive an itemized bill. In that bill you can see services from each provider and also the cost for the room, medicine, etc… Frequently the costs seem far out of line from reality (outside the walls of medicine); a room could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a night; an aspirin or readily available over-the-counter medicine could cost many dollars per pill.
The real issue is that the medical industry is primarily a “fixed cost” business, with very low “marginal costs”. For example, if you look at the Northwestern Hospital facility downtown, a vast series of interconnected buildings, and asked yourself this question:
“How would costs vary on a given day if the facility was full of patients vs. having NO patients?”
The answer is that the costs for that day would be virtually identical whether or not the hospital had patients. You still need to pay for the facility, the doctors, the electricity, and all the support workers and nurses. Virtually the only “variable” costs that would be avoided are the cost of medicines and food, but the medicines are inventoried and they need to hold stocks in advance and the food must be purchased based on planned demand and the spare food would just be thrown away (the costs would be pretty much the same).
We’re Making Progess! Sort Of.
Wont as I am to see the silver lining in every cloud, I can’t help but think that two recent racial episodes represent a sort of progress in racial relations.
In the Jena-6 case in Louisiana, a group of six black teenagers sucker-punched a white teenager and then kicked the crap out him while he lay unconscious on the ground. They did so after the white teenager made racially derogatory comments.
In the Duke non-rape case, a white, vote whoring D.A. framed a group of (mostly) upper-class white jocks for the rape of a black women. He appears to have been motivated by a desire to curry favor with local black voters.
The Myth of Retaliation
I wrote earlier about the fairly widespread erroneous belief that the Bush administration advocated the invasion/liberation of Iraq due to the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks.
As a sociological phenomenon, this error fascinates me. The liberation and democratization of Iraq is the major political event of our times, yet we see that a significant minority of lay people and cognoscenti alike honestly do not understand the rather clearly stated rationales for attempting it. Why do so many people make such an important decision based on an erroneous premise and what does this say about the overall quality of our general political decision making?