Least Significant Nibble

The disastrous roll-out of healthcare.gov has been much in the news these last few weeks. Unsurprisingly, the Affordable Care Act is polling at an all-time low. I can certainly understand why. However, as much bad press as the IT disaster has received, I think there is a more fundamental reason why the law is unpopular. Universal health care, whatever the details of its implementation, forces healthy people to pay for sick people's care. No matter how smoothly healthcare.gov operates, the redistributive principle that underpins it will rankle many Americans. One logical solution to this problem is to reject the idea of universal health care entirely, because of the coercion under-girding it. (This might be considered the Randian position.) The drawback of this approach is the heightened risk of bankruptcy or death among the population that can't pay for care. Many Americans find this unappealing: polls are generally   in favor of some form of guaranteed health insurance. If...

Last year, Michael Saffioti died of a dairy allergy while in the custody of the Snohomish County Jail, the eighth death there in the last three years. The guards told him that his oatmeal did not contain dairy, then denied him medical treatment when he went into shock. Snohomish County subsequently tried to cover it up. No criminal charges have been filed. Most commenters on the story are rightly aghast, but some think that Saffioti got what was coming. Imagine how much less they would care if he were a blah person. Comments on Salon If you're aware of a deathly allergy then why would you eat the food..? It's sad, but, no one forced him to do something illegal and get arrested, and no one forced him to eat food he was allergic to.  The guards should still get charged for not following protocol, but it was pretty much this kid's fault that he put himself in the situation. ---- OK, I know a few prison guards.  And these slime balls under their supervision are always t...

Hyperbole is not a blank check to say stupid shit.

A pair of Swedes has developed a clever " invisible bike helmet " (hat tip: Zach Yeager ). I won't spoil how they did it, so please watch the video. I hope their new design prompts more people to wear helmets. That being said, there is a lot more to being safe than merely wearing a helmet. Some observations: Helmets certainly can't prevent broken limbs; it also seems unlikely that they would reduce neck and spinal injuries. Rotational acceleration is a major contributor to brain injury. Ongoing research on football concussions suggest that helmets do little to reduce rotational acceleration. Styrofoam helmets may not even be that good at reducing linear acceleration, either. They are supposed to reduce acceleration through compression, but it is fairly common for them to fracture instead. Fracturing reduces acceleration less than compression does. (I expect the invisible Swedish helmet to be far superior on this front. Watch the video!) If you don't like...

The rhetorical bestiary is an ongoing collection of stupid arguments that just won't die. The rhetoric: "My goodness, people are so entitled today. I work for a mid-size office company, and I've had a hard time filling my last few job listings. Everyone I interview has unreasonable expectations about pay and benefits." In a market economy, all the actors try to get the best possible price for the goods or services they are selling. Widget makers sell widgets at the highest price the market will bear. Exxon sells gasoline at the highest price the market will bear. Workers sell their labor at the highest price the market will bear. The rhetorician wishes to purchase labor below the prevailing market price. When a below-market price fails to attract any workers, he blames anyone but himself.

The current generation is really screwing things up. We are lazy, narcissistic, and promiscuous. We demand too much praise. We are too materialistic. To that list you can add that we have no competitive spirit , at least according to Kevin Helliker. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Helliker brags about  bemoans placing in the top 11% of the Chicago Triathlon. Without even considering the far simpler explanation that none of the real triathletes were competing at the sprint distance, Helliker immediately offers the generational doom-and-gloom hypothesis. Is there an unwritten rule mandating that only the flimsiest evidence be presented in these kinds of articles? To support his thesis, Helliker makes the following points: Some guy named Ryan Lamppa agrees with him. (I have never in my life heard of Ryan Lamppa, and I have no idea why I am supposed to care what Ryan Lamppa thinks about anything.) Americans haven't medalled in the marathon since 2004. Of course Flanagan's...

In 2004, Hillary Adams used Kazaa to download some music. Her father, an Aransas County judge, sat Hillary down to have a calm discussion about P2P networks, why much content on them is illegal, and how file sharing undercuts to earnings of struggling artists. Hillary recorded this video: My primary aim is not to condemn William Adams, though of course some judgments will creep in. Instead, I should like to talk about a wrong-headed narrative that has grown around this story. One article I read speculated that this video would set off a national dialogue about child discipline. Such a dialogue would surely be beneficial. But parental discipline is not what we see in this video, even if an unrepentant Adams couched his actions in those very terms. [I]n my mind I haven’t done anything wrong other than discipline my child after she was caught stealing, and I did lose my temper but I’ve since apologized. It looks worse than it is. (Some of you, desen...