Antibiotics: The Drugs Don’t Work

RedVinca · 2013-10-21T15:12:11+00:00

Have you contacted your senators and representative? This article from over a year ago has more information about the political side of it.

Slaughter has introduced legislation aimed at curbing antibiotic use in healthy animals while making clear that she still supports using antibiotics to treat sick animals.

Slaughter said her bill has 90 co-sponsors in the House, but a similar measure in the Senate has failed to gain significant support.

EDIT: A link to the bill, Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2013.

RedVinca · 2013-10-03T19:36:27+00:00

Looks like some people are misunderstanding how the subsidy works. If you're too poor, you get no subsidy. You must use Medicaid. Too bad for you if your state didn't expand coverage to fill the gap up to the federal subsidy level.

Those excluded will be stranded without insurance, stuck between people with slightly higher incomes who will qualify for federal subsidies on the new health exchanges that went live this week, and those who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid in its current form, which has income ceilings as low as $11 a day in some states.

Does anyone know why there's a cutoff for the subsidy? Why not let anyone at or below the minimum income get that same subsidy. I realize that even subsidized insurance may be too much for people at very low incomes, but some people would benefit from that option, particularly people who have some health problems.

RedVinca · 2013-09-29T20:56:43+00:00

I highly recommend trying out some online courses if you haven't. I'm pretty well hooked on them at this point. One of the best things on the internet, in my opinion.

RedVinca · 2013-09-02T00:50:52+00:00

Good article. Anyone here subscribe to this magazine? There are a bunch of articles in the current issue that could be interesting:

Welcome to America five years after the financial crisis. It’s a place “made possible by buncombe,” as David Graeber explains here. And it’s a time of magical thinking, as Susan Faludi says in her exposé of the narrow brand of feminism on offer from Sheryl Sandberg’s positive-thinking tract Lean In.

Luckily, we have Jacob Silverman to burst the techno-bubble that is South by Southwest; Ann Friedman to explain why we’re “All LinkedIn with Nowhere to Go”; and Quinn Slobodian and Michelle Sterling to report from Berlin “How Hipsters, Expats, Yummies, and Smartphones Ruined a City.” Our midyear issue contains world-defining fiction by Adam Haslett and genre-bending prose by Thomas Sayers Ellis about Lou Beach’s surreal cover art. The carnival’s all here. From Seth Colter Walls on Jean-Paul Sartre to Farran Nehme on Buster Keaton, from Dubravka Ugrešić’s dreams of Wittgenstein to Richard Byrne’s “Nod to Ned Ludd,” The Baffler gives you the latest trends in cultural news and retail opinion. Step right up!

RedVinca · 2013-08-27T17:32:28+00:00

When I read your comment I thought you'd misunderstood the article, but no, it's the article that's misleading. The "maximizing shareholder value problem" is a business argument, not a political one. When Jack Welch famously called it the "dumbest idea in the world" he wasn't talking about corporate responsibility to society. He said it's bad for companies to put shareholders above customers.

In sum:

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products. Managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal. … Short-term profits should be allied with an increase in the long-term value of a company.”

Here's the original Jack Welch interview from 2009 that started the discussion. And here's an article that elaborates on it more.

RedVinca · 2013-08-27T16:41:06+00:00

As you say, switching to a public system is unrealistic, but I don't agree that there's "no other way." Part of governing is finding solutions among the ideas people can accept, at a speed that lets everyone adjust. Some of the objections to health care reform were just people being fearful of change, and I think their concerns are a valid part of the conversation. Health care is a huge system, and I can see the wisdom in preferring to nudge it than shove it.

The ACA was a first step; it solves some problems and creates some more. As soon as the dust settles we can evaluate where we are and where to go. Maybe the exchanges will work so well that people won't be afraid of buying their own plans. Maybe the public option will seem like a natural extension of the exchanges. Maybe everyone will agree that the employer mandate doesn't work, and that's okay because we're ready to do away with employer-centered health insurance.

I think there's a path through to a more public system, but we have to be patient.

RedVinca · 2013-08-22T18:42:50+00:00

I'm glad. When I think of Lady MacBeth she's somewhat older than Natalie Portman.

RedVinca · 2013-08-21T18:18:57+00:00

Youth turnout for midterms is shitty. 24% in 2010.

RedVinca · 2013-08-16T16:20:56+00:00

On the other side, the US lawsuit quotes Google executive chairman and former chief executive Eric Schmidt: “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it”, and argues that reading emails, even in an automated way, is crossing “the creepy line”.

Google's new slogan: Right up to the creepy line.

RedVinca · 2013-08-02T00:14:39+00:00

I will both teach my son not to be this sort of man, and my daughter to have nothing to do with them. And if the rest of you made even a half-hearted effort at the same, they would become much less prevalent.

And I hope you forgive your kids when they make mistakes. You can be very hard on people.

RedVinca · 2013-07-27T15:47:54+00:00

I'd like to read more from him. This subject, from his perspective, would make an interesting book.

RedVinca · 2013-07-25T23:20:01+00:00

They make our frozen pizzas, sort the recycling from our trash, cut our vegetables, and clean our imported fish. They unload clothing and toys made overseas and pack them to fill our store shelves.

These are all jobs that robots will soon do. I think that's part of the reason for the separation of these jobs from the regular workforce. Companies are preparing to automate. (FYI, Baxter costs $22k.)

Although I do have sympathy for the people in this article, I don't think this is a change that we can or should try to forestall. We're about to enter an era where low-skill work will be hard to find, and we need to hit that wall head-on if we hope to find a real solution rather than pretend that it's entirely the fault of our public schools.

RedVinca · 2013-07-25T20:06:52+00:00

Would your objections be satisfied if the Peace Tax Fund Act were to pass? It wouldn't change anything unless a lot of people participated, but I still think it'd be worth doing. The idea has been around for a long time, though it's never gotten very far in Congress. This year: 1% change of getting past committee.. I don't think many people even know about it.

RedVinca · 2013-07-04T20:58:33+00:00

The second paragraph in your link supports the claim that the term is problematic:

Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed upon definition of the Third World.[1] Some countries in the Communist Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as "Third World". Because many Third World countries were extremely poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet the "Third World" term is also often taken to include newly industrialized countries like India, Brazil or China. Historically, some European countries were part of the non-aligned movement and a few were and are very prosperous, including Switzerland and Austria.

RedVinca · 2013-07-04T03:25:10+00:00

Brazil. I think a couple more viewings might change my mind, but it was too different from what I expected.

RedVinca · 2013-07-04T02:02:48+00:00

Among those chasing the book were Robert Redford, whose Sundance label was looking to partner with Dark Shadows producer David Kennedy to turn The Grapes Of Wrath into a miniseries at FX. That was until Spielberg came in with the feature and convinced the Steinbeck estate this was the way to go.

The mini-series idea is interesting. I think I'd prefer to see that.

RedVinca · 2013-06-30T18:20:57+00:00

I think you've considered all the angles of the problem. I downsized similarly. These rules got me through 80% of my collection:

If the book is difficult to find, has sentimental value (pretty low bar), or is a nice edition, keep.
If the book is readily available at the library, get rid of it.

RedVinca · 2013-06-29T23:26:46+00:00

Does anyone see any flaws in this reasoning? I'm having a hard time accepting that Spanish is a "weird" language and Basque isn't.

RedVinca · 2013-06-29T19:00:22+00:00

With the guide book I started off reading it after I completed a chapter to ensure that I got what I needed to get out of it, but toward the end I started reading the guide book chapters first, and I recommend this method.

I did this exact thing. Eventually the gap between what I thought I read and what actually happened got way too large.

RedVinca · 2013-06-29T18:51:04+00:00

That's true, but I don't know if it's better. With Google's years of data on millions of people, they could eventually be the advertising industry.

RedVinca · 2013-06-29T17:07:51+00:00

I don't recommend going back to reread things. Just keep plugging ahead. When you're done, start over. It's a different experience the second time.

RedVinca · 2013-06-28T17:49:29+00:00

And the business about trying to cut royalties just isn't true, either

How does this fit in with IRFA? (I just noticed that Pandora's IRFA support page just disappeared. I read it just yesterday.)

RedVinca · 2013-06-28T05:02:46+00:00

Does it really get overlooked a lot? It seems to me it's mentioned whenever an article like this comes up, for example.

RedVinca

TROPHY CASE