The PPACA stands to severely limit Utah’s attempts at health care reform. They’d actually initially tried to do the unthinkable: decouple insurance from employment. I don’t know what exactly it’s going to take to fix our system, though I do wish we’d try for more state experimentation. I’d like to see some states try single-payer, but also subsidized high-deductible plans.
I have a hierarchy of preference for health care reform, and there are many ahead of PPACA in that hierarchy. One of the things I’d really like to have seen tried somewhere are subsidized HSA’s and high-deductible insurance plans. Notably, whatever happens in the PPACA in court, some of the changes are going to stick.
Indiana has become the first state to allow citizens to shoot cops who unlawfully enter their homes.
Doug Mataconis asks whether the Evolution fight matters. I’m increasingly coming around to the point of view that it doesn’t and that it mostly serves as a social signal for self-justified disapproval of others. Relatedly, I think Robert Wright’s comments on the history of the struggle are on-target.
The downside to term limits: Mike Bloomberg doesn’t care what you think. Term limits in Colosse initially had the ill-effect of preventing challengers from running against incumbents (why bother? It’ll be an open field soon enough!), though we fortunately had a mayor so incompetent that it set a precedent for not waiting.
Just become some people are taking anti-depressant medications unnecessarily doesn’t mean that they don’t work.
Per Bakadesuyo, rate of violence in women’s prisons equal that of men’s… or is worse. That’s in number of episodes. Male inmates are more effective with violence, once deployed.
Pictures from around the world of people with college degrees that are not where they hoped they would be. I particularly feel for the guy with the industrial chemistry degree.
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There needs to be more context in photo essay of people with college degrees working in services jobs. When I lived in Bulgaria (mid 1990s) it was very common to find people with college degrees (even PhDs) doing service jobs like this. Others that I know who lived in different countries in Europe (Germany, Italy, etc.) had similar stories to share. It was and is very hard for many Europeans to get jobs in their native culture because the employment laws are so screwy and/or the economy simply wasn’t doing well. So for those people in Europe, stuff like this has been the norm for a long, long time.
It’s sad to see this coming to the states in large numbers but it’s only going to get worse unless there’s some serious change in Washington D.C.
Thanks for the info. That just makes it all the more distressing. Here we can’t get enough people to major in things like industrial chemistry and have to import talent.
Careful–a lot of the reason people don’t major in chemistry is stuff like this.
Oh, and BTW: what are you planning to teach your kids? (You don’t have to answer questions of anonymous internet people about your childrearing unless you want to, of course.) If you do raise them to believe in evolution, how are you going to deal with them being thought of as weird and/or possibly losing their faith? (I’m an atheist, but I know church is an important social tie and source of strength in bad times…)
Evolution all the way, but be respectful of others’ beliefs. The religion question itself hasn’t been settled yet, but even if we go the Episcopal route, TEC has no beef with evolution.
“but I know church is an important social tie and source of strength in bad times”
SFG,
You’re on to something here. Southerners, especially the poorer demographics, heavily rely on their churches not just for charity but for social support and even garden-variety social activity. I don’t know how some of these people would function without their churches.
Out of curiosity given your background, did your family ever rely on church/synagogue during bad times? My family certainly neither sought nor expected much from the Reform synagogue no matter our circumstances. It is my impression that that non-Orthodox Jews generally expect much support from their synagogues, whether because of some perceived shamefulness in seeking it or because they feel that the community there won’t be very helpful. Or perhaps the blogger Agnostic is right and we’re all just Aspergery types who don’t like each other very much.
I particularly feel for the guy with the industrial chemistry degree.
One could argue tnat he is using his degree as a street sweeper…
Anyway, in that article there are a lot of fluffy degrees. The industrial chemist was not indicative of the rest of the group.
The picture reminds me of a joke:
Why is it a waste of money to buy a woman a watch?
There is a clock on the stove.
Anyway, in that article there are a lot of fluffy degrees. The industrial chemist was not indicative of the rest of the group.
Yeah, but he’s not alone in there, either. Commerce, corporate finance, civil engineering…
Omega: Mixed marriage, no affiliation. Hard times do occur, obviously, and I’m not sure what in particular people do. I know rabbis *do* make a lot more money than priests or ministers, and I suspect it’s a matter of paying people enough not to go to medical school–I wouldn’t be too surprised if upscale Episcopalian churches face a similar dilemma. Plus Jews like to have smart clergy. 😉
I’m not sure if Jews have a higher frequency of Asperger’s. Wouldn’t be surprised; on the other hand, a higher mean IQ would mean less autism and more Asperger’s for the same level of defective mirror neurons.
And it’s not a personal insight, it comes from reading blogs like this and realizing that the rest of the country does not live the way I grew up in New York. Frankly, a lot of political blogs have to hew to either the left or right party line, and if a liberal blogger says something nice about religion they get piled on.