Read from Mostly on the Edge: An Autobiography
by Karl Hess 
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Fast Gross Food
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Karen De Coster recently linked to the above video and called fat-assed Americans gross pigs. She actually makes some good points, though I'm not sure I take quite the same attitude toward ordinary, stressed-out people. It's no wonder we're all (well, almost all) so damn fat. What else has the average wage-slave got to look forward to besides stuffing their face with grotesque mounds of indigestible "food", except maybe getting drunk, and you can't (or shouldn't) do that every day.
The fast food industry seems unable or unwilling to create anything really good (or truly tasty in the real sense) and continues to stretch the limits of good taste (ha ha) when it comes to coming up with new, gargantuan calorie concoctions. The menu inventions seemingly have to become more and more extreme to keep the over-weight masses interested.
I'm waiting for the Taco Bell Double Crunchwrap Supreme (or have they already done that?).
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Dear Uncle Jim
Dear Uncle Jim,
Dad read your recent letter and I believe he is sending a note to you soon. Don't worry about us getting involved in any "New Age" garbage. The whole movement that calls itself that is nothing but nonsense from start to finish.
But we must be on guard against any form of superstitious thinking. The Tuesday earthquake that hit the San Francisco area is an example. As soon as we heard the news, we said, "Well, it finally happened, the Big One hit", even though scientists now say this wasn't the big one, but still a very large quake. You see, everybody knows that large earthquakes in California are inevitable because of geological conditions here. San Francisco sits over the San Andreas fault and so will always be vulnerable to periodic quakes. Two of the earth's great moving plates, the North American and the Pacific, meet along the coast of California. They are constantly moving at a rate of about two inches a year. All the plates on earth are moving. So earthquakes are a natural phenomenon, like wind and rain and hurricanes.
When enough friction develops and the pressure builds to a certain level, the earth snaps and gives way and you get a sudden large movement along a fault line, causing an earthquake (they say in the great 1906 quake-an 8.3, more than thirty times as powerful as the one on Tuesday-the movement on the fault was 20 feet).
I write the above not because I think you ignorant of facts like these, but just so I can lead to the following.
When something bad like this big earthquake happens, some Christians fall into a disturbing habit. They say it's the judgment of God on sinful humans. God's giving us a warning of some sort, and He chose this particular time, place and event to make His point. Of course no notion could be more absurd, but Christians continue to make such statements.
The day after, Wednesday, I decided to watch the 700 Club to see what Pat Robertson had to say. I was about 90% sure he'd claim God's divine wrath had been provoked and the Almighty had expressed His anger by shaking the ground and causing buildings and freeways to collapse and crush people, including children and pregnant women (there actually was a pregnant woman who was on the double deck highway 880 when it collapsed-she survived but she lost the baby). Since Robertson is always making idiotic and outrageous statements, I wasn't too surprised by his comments. He said God was trying to tell us something and he went through a list of America's sins that included adultery, homosexuality and abortion.
"God's simply saying," informed Pat, "that if you go on slaughtering millions of children by abortion, I'm gonna start slaughtering some of you." This is incredible. What kind of a God is Robertson presenting to us here? Of course, to someone with the intellectual capacity of a turnip, Pat's version of reality makes complete logical sense. After all, isn't San Francisco our most sinful city (with the possible exception of Las Vegas) with all those gays and lesbians prancing down the streets celebrating their perversion?
But wait a minute, Pat, what's going on here? I thought God was for protecting the unborn and against "murdering" them by abortion. Yet, to get His message across, He "slaughters" (Rev. Robertson's word) an unborn child in its mother's womb (the woman on the collapsed freeway). If we take Pat seriously (can anybody really do that?), should we say "Hey God, get your act together. You're message isn't coming through clear. Do you want Americans to have more abortions?" Or maybe God should say, "Hey, Pat, shut your mouth, you don't speak for me?"
In areas that experience large earthquakes, such earthquakes can be expected to occur at regular intervals, with major quakes occurring about every 100 to 200 years. So even had this bay area quake been the big one (and it wasn't) the pressure would inexorably begin to build again and another disaster of the same magnitude would someday be inevitable. So how is God involved? After all, we call these things natural disasters, not supernatural disasters.
Suppose Robertson's 700 Club is so successful that millions are converted to his strange (he hasn't preformed his very strange "word of knowledge" act in awhile I notice- "there's a woman in Cincinnati with a swollen knee cap, God's healing that right now") brand of Christianity. Or even worse, the Christian Reconstructionists have their way and the Constitution is thrown out in favor of a right-wing theocracy based on Old Testament law and Calvinist theology. In their vision, the culture has been completely transformed and everything in society is "Christ centered". What need of earthquakes then, if they are a form of chastisement from God?
The people have repented and the Church controls the world. When an earthquake strikes Born-Again San Francisco in the year 2089, will the Pat Robertson types still say it's God's judgment because of wickedness? Or will they, finally and rightly, admit that earthquakes and other natural disasters are a natural and normal and inevitable part of the way things are. No different from windy days where power lines are sometimes blown down, or the fact that you'll probably catch at least one cold virus this winter, or that you'll develop cavities in your teeth if you eat too much candy and don't brush (and maybe develop them even if your abstain from sugary treats and do brush).
One more short word before I leave this subject. Here is part of a newspaper report on the quake:
Unlike Pat Robertson and other Christians who think like him, I do not believe any God would deliberately cause something to happen that would result in a horror like that.
Well, that's all for now Uncle Jim. I'll write again soon.
Dad read your recent letter and I believe he is sending a note to you soon. Don't worry about us getting involved in any "New Age" garbage. The whole movement that calls itself that is nothing but nonsense from start to finish.
But we must be on guard against any form of superstitious thinking. The Tuesday earthquake that hit the San Francisco area is an example. As soon as we heard the news, we said, "Well, it finally happened, the Big One hit", even though scientists now say this wasn't the big one, but still a very large quake. You see, everybody knows that large earthquakes in California are inevitable because of geological conditions here. San Francisco sits over the San Andreas fault and so will always be vulnerable to periodic quakes. Two of the earth's great moving plates, the North American and the Pacific, meet along the coast of California. They are constantly moving at a rate of about two inches a year. All the plates on earth are moving. So earthquakes are a natural phenomenon, like wind and rain and hurricanes.
When enough friction develops and the pressure builds to a certain level, the earth snaps and gives way and you get a sudden large movement along a fault line, causing an earthquake (they say in the great 1906 quake-an 8.3, more than thirty times as powerful as the one on Tuesday-the movement on the fault was 20 feet).
I write the above not because I think you ignorant of facts like these, but just so I can lead to the following.
When something bad like this big earthquake happens, some Christians fall into a disturbing habit. They say it's the judgment of God on sinful humans. God's giving us a warning of some sort, and He chose this particular time, place and event to make His point. Of course no notion could be more absurd, but Christians continue to make such statements.
The day after, Wednesday, I decided to watch the 700 Club to see what Pat Robertson had to say. I was about 90% sure he'd claim God's divine wrath had been provoked and the Almighty had expressed His anger by shaking the ground and causing buildings and freeways to collapse and crush people, including children and pregnant women (there actually was a pregnant woman who was on the double deck highway 880 when it collapsed-she survived but she lost the baby). Since Robertson is always making idiotic and outrageous statements, I wasn't too surprised by his comments. He said God was trying to tell us something and he went through a list of America's sins that included adultery, homosexuality and abortion.
"God's simply saying," informed Pat, "that if you go on slaughtering millions of children by abortion, I'm gonna start slaughtering some of you." This is incredible. What kind of a God is Robertson presenting to us here? Of course, to someone with the intellectual capacity of a turnip, Pat's version of reality makes complete logical sense. After all, isn't San Francisco our most sinful city (with the possible exception of Las Vegas) with all those gays and lesbians prancing down the streets celebrating their perversion?
But wait a minute, Pat, what's going on here? I thought God was for protecting the unborn and against "murdering" them by abortion. Yet, to get His message across, He "slaughters" (Rev. Robertson's word) an unborn child in its mother's womb (the woman on the collapsed freeway). If we take Pat seriously (can anybody really do that?), should we say "Hey God, get your act together. You're message isn't coming through clear. Do you want Americans to have more abortions?" Or maybe God should say, "Hey, Pat, shut your mouth, you don't speak for me?"
In areas that experience large earthquakes, such earthquakes can be expected to occur at regular intervals, with major quakes occurring about every 100 to 200 years. So even had this bay area quake been the big one (and it wasn't) the pressure would inexorably begin to build again and another disaster of the same magnitude would someday be inevitable. So how is God involved? After all, we call these things natural disasters, not supernatural disasters.
Suppose Robertson's 700 Club is so successful that millions are converted to his strange (he hasn't preformed his very strange "word of knowledge" act in awhile I notice- "there's a woman in Cincinnati with a swollen knee cap, God's healing that right now") brand of Christianity. Or even worse, the Christian Reconstructionists have their way and the Constitution is thrown out in favor of a right-wing theocracy based on Old Testament law and Calvinist theology. In their vision, the culture has been completely transformed and everything in society is "Christ centered". What need of earthquakes then, if they are a form of chastisement from God?
The people have repented and the Church controls the world. When an earthquake strikes Born-Again San Francisco in the year 2089, will the Pat Robertson types still say it's God's judgment because of wickedness? Or will they, finally and rightly, admit that earthquakes and other natural disasters are a natural and normal and inevitable part of the way things are. No different from windy days where power lines are sometimes blown down, or the fact that you'll probably catch at least one cold virus this winter, or that you'll develop cavities in your teeth if you eat too much candy and don't brush (and maybe develop them even if your abstain from sugary treats and do brush).
One more short word before I leave this subject. Here is part of a newspaper report on the quake:
Six-year-old Julio was discovered, whimpering, among the devastated cars on Route 880. His feet were crushed under the rubble. For hours, rescuers attempted to pull the child from the cruel embrace of the bridge. But what they thought was movement was just his clothing slipping from his body. The firemen and the doctors knew what they had to do. The boy's leg would have to be amputated on the spot. As surgeon James Betts climbed the ladder to the stricken child, he was told that the boy's dead mother was in the way. He would have to cut through her body to reach him. And he did it.
Unlike Pat Robertson and other Christians who think like him, I do not believe any God would deliberately cause something to happen that would result in a horror like that.
Well, that's all for now Uncle Jim. I'll write again soon.
Friday, September 11, 2009
How Many Are You?
This was making the email rounds at work. You can enter your first and last name and find out how many other American's you share your name with.
How Many of Me
The U.S. Census Bureau statistics tell us that there are at least 151,671 different last names and 5,163 different first names in common use in the United States. Some names are more common than others.
There are 44,444 people named John Smith in the United States. There are 967 people named James Bond, 102 people named Harry Potter , 433 people named George Bush, and 31 people named Emily Dickinson. However, Johnny Cash (32 people) songs aside there are, statistically speaking, very few boys named Sue.
Incentivizing Drug Innovation without Monopolies: The Prize Proposal for the U.S. Pharmaceutical Martket
An interview with James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International and co-chair of the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue Working Group on Intellectual Property, by Multinational Monitor.
MM: Can you provide a thumbnail sketch for your prize proposal for the U.S. pharmaceutical market?
Love: In the U.S. market, the first proposal was to retain much of the current system, in terms of the granting of patents, but to eliminate the market exclusivity for prescription medicines. The reward for a successful R&D effort would not be a legal monopoly, but rather a share of the Medical Innovation Prize Fund.
The Medical Innovation Prize Fund would base its rewards on the impact of new products on health care outcomes. The rewards would be based upon objective evidence. Outcomes would be benchmarked against existing medicines. These changes alone would vastly reduce incentives to spend money to develop or market products that have little therapeutic gain over existing medicines, leading to very large savings.
The elimination of monopolies on products permits competition by generic manufacturers, and will lead to low prices, particularly in a market where there is no initial period of a monopoly to associate the product with a trademarked brand name.
In the absence of a legal monopoly, the procurement of difficult-to-manufacture biologic products could be organized much better, given the opportunities for governments and insurance companies to acquire products from low cost suppliers. The lower prices would lead to the elimination of price sensitive formularies, better utilization of products and improved health outcomes.
MM: If patents are a kind of prize for innovators, why would a cash prize be superior?
Love: Prizes can be designed in ways that provide more rational and efficient incentives for product development. If prizes are used as a substitute for the monopoly, you can avoid all sorts of problems caused by the monopoly, such as high prices or wasteful marketing efforts.
MM: Where does the money come from for large-scale prizes?
Love: To be a serious alternative to the current system, the prize would would have to be large. We have estimated a prize of 0.5 to 0.6 of U.S. GDP would be more than enough. In today’s economy, the U.S. prize fund would have been about $80 billion per year, growing with the GDP.
In the original versions of the bill, the money for the prizes would have come from the federal government. In the next version of the bill, there will likely be some sharing of the costs with entities that provide health insurance. We believe insurance companies will support the prize fund approach, because it is a far cheaper and more sustainable way to pay for innovation than the current system.
MM: Is this a massive public subsidy for Big Pharma?
Love: The current system is incredibly wasteful and constantly gamed by Big Pharma. The prize fund approach would radically reform the market for innovation, in the same way the Internet has radically changed the way we use telecommunications. The supply of useful innovation would be a highly competitive activity, rather than one that is crippled by irrational incentives, corrupt marketing practices and unproductive rent-seeking activities.
MM: How would a prize system work to lower medicine prices?
Love: By eliminating legal monopolies and prompting competition for products. Prices would be low, as they have been in India for decades.
Read the entire interview: Eyes on the Prize: Incentivizing Drug Innovation without Monopolies
MM: Can you provide a thumbnail sketch for your prize proposal for the U.S. pharmaceutical market?
Love: In the U.S. market, the first proposal was to retain much of the current system, in terms of the granting of patents, but to eliminate the market exclusivity for prescription medicines. The reward for a successful R&D effort would not be a legal monopoly, but rather a share of the Medical Innovation Prize Fund.
The Medical Innovation Prize Fund would base its rewards on the impact of new products on health care outcomes. The rewards would be based upon objective evidence. Outcomes would be benchmarked against existing medicines. These changes alone would vastly reduce incentives to spend money to develop or market products that have little therapeutic gain over existing medicines, leading to very large savings.
The elimination of monopolies on products permits competition by generic manufacturers, and will lead to low prices, particularly in a market where there is no initial period of a monopoly to associate the product with a trademarked brand name.
In the absence of a legal monopoly, the procurement of difficult-to-manufacture biologic products could be organized much better, given the opportunities for governments and insurance companies to acquire products from low cost suppliers. The lower prices would lead to the elimination of price sensitive formularies, better utilization of products and improved health outcomes.
MM: If patents are a kind of prize for innovators, why would a cash prize be superior?
Love: Prizes can be designed in ways that provide more rational and efficient incentives for product development. If prizes are used as a substitute for the monopoly, you can avoid all sorts of problems caused by the monopoly, such as high prices or wasteful marketing efforts.
MM: Where does the money come from for large-scale prizes?
Love: To be a serious alternative to the current system, the prize would would have to be large. We have estimated a prize of 0.5 to 0.6 of U.S. GDP would be more than enough. In today’s economy, the U.S. prize fund would have been about $80 billion per year, growing with the GDP.
In the original versions of the bill, the money for the prizes would have come from the federal government. In the next version of the bill, there will likely be some sharing of the costs with entities that provide health insurance. We believe insurance companies will support the prize fund approach, because it is a far cheaper and more sustainable way to pay for innovation than the current system.
MM: Is this a massive public subsidy for Big Pharma?
Love: The current system is incredibly wasteful and constantly gamed by Big Pharma. The prize fund approach would radically reform the market for innovation, in the same way the Internet has radically changed the way we use telecommunications. The supply of useful innovation would be a highly competitive activity, rather than one that is crippled by irrational incentives, corrupt marketing practices and unproductive rent-seeking activities.
MM: How would a prize system work to lower medicine prices?
Love: By eliminating legal monopolies and prompting competition for products. Prices would be low, as they have been in India for decades.
The Fraud of Democracy
While the war in Afghanistan rages on, with US casualties piling up, a majority of Americans now say the war is not worth fighting (and they're right, of course). One of our proclaimed ultimate goals for the country we invaded is some kind of "democracy", but if "democracy" as practiced in the West is any indication, it has nothing to do with the will of the people being carried out. If it did, we would not be sending more troops into that poor, abused, long-suffering nation.
In other "democracy" news, the LRC blog informs us of French President Sarkozy's proposed carbon tax, which polls showed two-thirds of the French public opposes (and once again, the people have more sense than the "leaders", for any such tax would impose enormous costs on the economy and raise the price of almost everything), but of course, the views of the public matter not to the elite ruling class, who are always determined to see their plans for yet more control over society implemented, regardless of what the people think or want.
Is that what we have planned for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq? The United States has a history of overthrowing democratically elected foreign governments and installing dictators friendly to America. Now our ruling establishment says its mission is "democracy". Frankly, I'm not sure what has changed.
As for "real" democracy, if there is such a thing, I'm opposed to it as well. I don't believe any majority has the right to decide anything for the whole society. You go your way, majority, and let the rest of us alone to live our lives as we choose, in peace. In other words, don't tread on me, and I'll promise not to tread on you.
In other "democracy" news, the LRC blog informs us of French President Sarkozy's proposed carbon tax, which polls showed two-thirds of the French public opposes (and once again, the people have more sense than the "leaders", for any such tax would impose enormous costs on the economy and raise the price of almost everything), but of course, the views of the public matter not to the elite ruling class, who are always determined to see their plans for yet more control over society implemented, regardless of what the people think or want.
Is that what we have planned for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq? The United States has a history of overthrowing democratically elected foreign governments and installing dictators friendly to America. Now our ruling establishment says its mission is "democracy". Frankly, I'm not sure what has changed.
As for "real" democracy, if there is such a thing, I'm opposed to it as well. I don't believe any majority has the right to decide anything for the whole society. You go your way, majority, and let the rest of us alone to live our lives as we choose, in peace. In other words, don't tread on me, and I'll promise not to tread on you.
9/11: Anthony Gregory On Understanding the Atrocity
Why did it happen? One answer given was that the terrorists simply hated America for its freedom. Those who believed this tended to feel that war was the only answer -- war to punish the evildoers and war to rebuild foreign societies so they would be free and no longer resent us. Another answer given was that the terrorists, although murderous criminals, were exploiting genuine grievances that many people in Muslim countries had against U.S. foreign policy.
Osama bin Laden repeatedly stressed the major objections: The U.S. had been supporting apostate dictatorships in the Muslim world, given one-sided support to Israel, occupied holy land such as the Arabian Peninsula, and enforced brutal sanctions on the Iraqi people that had left hundreds of thousands of Muslims, mostly children, dead.
Americans are warned not to forget what happened eight years ago, but we must not assume history began on that date. Those in the Muslim world tend to have a much longer memory.
The Causes, Aftermath and Lessons of 9/11
Osama bin Laden repeatedly stressed the major objections: The U.S. had been supporting apostate dictatorships in the Muslim world, given one-sided support to Israel, occupied holy land such as the Arabian Peninsula, and enforced brutal sanctions on the Iraqi people that had left hundreds of thousands of Muslims, mostly children, dead.
Americans are warned not to forget what happened eight years ago, but we must not assume history began on that date. Those in the Muslim world tend to have a much longer memory.
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