Congressman Steve Pearce thinks congress should be allowed to telecommute. A part of me wonders if we shouldn’t just make’em telecommute.
Being alone is, apparently, bad for your health. Even if you’re a loner.
Somehow, I’m not surprised that the best live-action Wonder Woman outfit is from porn.
How much damage did Fukushima do to efforts to combat climate change?
One of the few reservations I personally have about nuclear power is the amount of time it takes to get a unit up and running. Maybe small reactors will help with that?
Diana Lind gushes over the possibility of cities without highways. Though I think the “induced demand” argument is problematic, I actually do think that urban highways should be re-evaluated. Highways to get into and around town are good, but once in town, maybe there is a better way.
If actual public opinion had its way, instead of interest groups, we’d have less legal immigration.
Is the fourth-wall breakdown in sitcoms a product of – and emblematic of – artistic laziness?
When we talk about how much physicians are paid, we also need to talk about the costs they incur.
Science fiction notoriously gets it wrong much of the time, so it’s noteworthy when science fiction gets it right.
Christopher Caldwell takes a look at abortion, national identity, and Ireland.
What do spies read for fun?
Thirty-three beautiful places… abandoned.
How driverless cars will affect our cities. The first one – increased expansion and sprawl – was not what I expect from such articles.
Glenn Reynolds wants to know who has the mineral rites… on an asteroid?
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Those abandoned places photos were interesting, though Angkor Wat doesn’t really belong, being a major tourist attraction. Also, although it’s not being used for anything, there is restoration work in progress on Michigan Central Station.
What are they restoring MCS for? I mean, what is it going to be when they’re done with it?
Diana Lind gushes over the possibility of cities without highways
FWIW, because of how many American urban cities are laid out, you’re still going to see some degree of highways, and it’s really unlikely that you’ll see that many more being torn down except in places where the highway is older and can be bypassed or is rather vestigial in function.
Of course, for comparison purposes, Paris has a beltway enveloping the city with no real highways within the small city, while London has a larger loop around the city and few upgraded roads leading into the city from there. Paris has a rather dense level of highways, but the transport network there is far more effective that than of any American city, and suburban office parks don’t play the same role that they do in the States. Even the industrial parks aren’t that difficult to get to using transit.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I like freeways to get into town, and I don’t want them to stop too far out of town. But I am sympathetic to how they divide neighborhoods. Southern Tech is by a freeway, and though our interactions with the surrounding neighborhoods in general were somewhat limited, nobody ever went across the freeway. We’d go ten minutes in the other direction before crossing the freeway to go five.
Focusing on how much physicians make is not going to solve the health care crisis. First of all, who among physicans has been getting raises? My older physician relatives are making the same absolute dollar amount or less than they made 10 years ago. In many cases, the fees have been cut, and the ones that haven’t been cut don’t have any built-in adjustment for inflation. Also, please consider that a majority of health care dollars go elsewhere, to insurers, hospitals, long term care facilities, etc. The technical fees paid to facility owners for imaging and procedures are often larger than the professional fees paid to physicians. Although in some cases, physicians own facilities that capture technical fees, that is true less and less as practices are absorbed by hospital systems and corporate entities. Also, physician-owned facilities skew heavily outpatient, and the per unit technical fees paid to outpatient facilities are lower than those paid to hospitals for the same procedure or test. I suspect that there is a more psychological explanation for the obsession with physician income.
Well, I’m not sure how physician salaries are going to be spared from the coming reckoning. If not from cut fee payments, then lost business. I’m kind of preferring the latter and the “lost business” is to those doctors drumming up unnecessary business. But… “death panels.”
To some extent, that’s because cutting payments to physicians is the low-hanging fruit of health care reform. Physicians are more divided among themselves (competing specialty interests) and have a weaker lobby than the hospitals and insurers. The AMA isn’t what it used to be.
Be careful what you wish for. “Death panels” have become a joke, but government-administered health care really does give bureaucrats a great deal of control over peoples’ options. It’s easy not to care when you’re still (relatively) young and healthy, but wait until they stick you or someone you know in a wheel chair for a couple of years before authorizing a hip replacement.
You’re right that it’s easier for me, a young and relatively healthy guy, to think that we’re going to have to crack down on certain procedures and such. But logistically, what we’re doing cannot sustain itself.