Will fear reduce healthcare costs?

Several weeks ago, new guidelines came out calling for a reduced schedule for employing mammograms.  Many citizens groups condemned these decisions, even though it was supported by many doctors and medical groups.  

Today, it is being reported that giving a child a CT scan carries a 1/500 chance of them developing cancer, not a trivial number.  Mammograms carry much lower, but similar risks.  Additionally, 1/3 of CT's are characterized as "unnecessary" but many people are now so scared after the death of Natasha Richardson that they feel any bump on the head merits one.  Perhaps this will scare them the other way, and also reduce medical costs for everyone.

The Year Of The Gun?

That's what MSNBC is calling 2009.  Many states passed laws making it easier for individuals to carry guns.  I don't have any problem with this, since CCW holders tend to be the most law abiding citizens around.

Christmas Trees!

Yesterday I bought my first real Christmas Tree ever. When we moved, we dumped our artificial tree since it was in such bad shape. Decided to get a real one this time. Seems to be a better deal at $34 (at Home Depot) vs a fake tree for $150 or more for a decent one. And even the "decent" ones last for a couple years.

Regarding environmental impact, it is actually less for a natural tree. They are mostly carbon neutral, since they absorb a lot of carbon during their lives. They are also recycle after. On the other side, artificial trees are made from PVC and other plastics, which can be traced back to oil. While neither is especially green, given transport, a real tree seems the way to go.

Google Public DNS

I am a big proponent of not using your ISP's DNS services, since they are often much slower than alternative such as Open DNS. Well, Google has just launched a public DNS. Word is that it is very fast, but not as fast as Open DNS if you live in the US. It is also not nearly as configurable.

While I may use Open DNS, for most users (especially international users), Google's solution will likely be the best option. Here is the page for instructions on how to configure your computer or router.

Food, Inc.

I watched Food, Inc several weeks ago, and it has made a big difference in the types of food I have consumed since. I always have tried to eat natural foods when possible, and organic when it is a good deal but after watching this movie I realized it is very difficult to avoid certain things, like corn, especially high fructose corn syrup.

I'm happy to say that in the past two weeks, I have not consume any meat other than fish. I'm not against eating meat, I just don't want to eat corn fed industrial farmed meat. Which does leave me a lot of choices, most notably bison (sometimes called buffalo) a grass fed animal that is mostly carbon neutral.

It is especially disheartening to learn about the big push to silence critics of the food supply, as if this is some type of god we ought to deify, leaving aside the impacts to all of us.

One criticism I have of the "healthy food" movement is the reluctance (or outright opposition to) food irradiation. Food irradiation has the potential to make our food supply much safer and more efficient, whether it be killing salmonella or helping fruit stay fresh for much longer without preservatives, and thereby lowering costs for consumers.

I recommend that everyone watch this film, the trailer is below.

Swiss crackdown on minarets

This is practically an "oddly enough" news item: Swiss voters have banned minarets in a referendum.

Switzerland prouds itself as being a direct democracy, wherein the voters are the ultimate decision makers. In this case, they have voted to ban minarets which appear to be pointing tops on mosques. Though I think they may also be on churches. Not sure.

Here is a good article on the pros and cons.

I agree that it would have been easier to have local bans on buildings of certain heights instead of singling out minarets, but the Swiss are known to be somewhat xenophobic at times.

Lions win in a crazy way

The Lions won today in a very unorthodox way, with a truly gutsy performance by rookie QB Matt Stafford. Here are the highlights from the game.

Incidentally, I will be attending the Thanksgiving Day game in person.

Go Lions!

Climate change "smoking gun" is nothing close to that

Fox News had a big headline today, that climate change had been disproved due to "secret emails" that had been found by a hacker. Is this true? Not even close. The email in question was basically talking about changing the presentation of a graph in order to make it look more convincing, from a visual perspective. Is this a questionnable tactic? Yes. Is it unethical? Possibly. But does it blow out of the water the millions of observations made over the past 30 years? Hardly.

Palin still stupid

Here's Sarah's foreign policy experience:

Didn't see anything did you? Good, me neither.

Seems that Ms. Palin supports Israeli settlements, an activity that the US must bring an end to to create peace. Yet another reason she's nuts.

Water on the moon

NASA has found that water exists on the moon. Preliminary results from the LCROSS mission shows that water is present on the moon in ice form and has been there for billions of years. Interesting to see that even in 2009, we can still make new discoveries like this. What this means is that we're one step closer to Mars, or a moonbase. Water can be used to make hydrogen, which is a very good fuel.

Unintended consequences in the war on banks

It is interesting to see how quickly people have moved against bank overdraft fees. These are nothing new; I was once dinged with one 5 years ago and have only myself to blame. Now we are looking at congressional regulation of these fees. While that's great in theory, what could the unintended consequences be of stripping banks of one of their money making enterprises?

1. The end of free checking
2. Reduced bank hours
3. Higher ATM fees
4. Lower interest rates

Trust me, the banks will make up for this somewhere, and instead of the people who are financially irresponsible paying for it, people like me, who keep a decent balance in their accounts, will likely end up footing the bill.

Racism and prejudice against Muslims

Brian Cuban has a very good post about the overt racism against Muslims in America that I highly recommend reading. In it he describes his personal confrontation with one of these bigots.

Google Wave: First Impressions

I finally got an invitation to join Google Wave, "what email would look like if it was invented now."

In my first hour looking at it, I am very impressed. Google Wave will allow people to have conversations akin to emails, without the worrying about truncated text, missing attachments, etc. It is still very rough, but the core idea is definitely on the mark.

The one drawback is that out of my 250 contacts, only 3-4 have Wave accounts at this time. Hopefully it will be rolled out to many more soon.

Obesity causes 100k cancer cases in US

Wow! If being fat wasn't already bad enough, check this out. Obesity causes over 100,000 cases of cancer in the US each year. Nearly 20% of breast cancer cases, and a lot of other nasty diseases are due to people eating too much.

Lay off the food.

The tide will turn, eventually

It looks as though equality will lose in Maine, even though it is currently too close to call. What I'm talking about, is that gay marriage will be again illegal per voters. I'm one for a democracy, but I agree with many that there are some decisions that are too important to be left up to voters. Examples include our entire bill of rights (like the 1st and 2nd amendments) and decisions like gay marriage. Why should 50% of the people to tell 10% of the people how to live, when the 10% do not affect the 50%? Conservatives may decry "activist judges" but these are the same types of actions that are applauded whenever they favor gun rights, which has not always been in such high regard as it is now.

Regardless of what happens in Maine, I think we could be within 10-15 years of nationwide recognition of these marriages. And if you believe Jacob Weisberg, we'll be able to celebrate it by smoking a legal joint.