Robert Reich’s Blog: How a Few Private Health Insurers Are on the Way to Controlling Health Care — Reich, the former Clintonian, has been doing the work of the media now for a couple of years.

A system based on private insurers won’t control costs because private insurers barely compete against each other. According to data from the American Medical Association, only a handful of insurers dominate most states. In 9 states, 2 insurance companies control 85 percent or more of the market. In Arkansas, home to Senator Blanche Lincoln, who doesn’t dare cross Big Insurance, the Blue Cross plan controls almost 70 percent of the market; most of the rest is United Healthcare. These data, by the way, are from 2005 and 2006. Since then, private insurers have been consolidating like mad across the country. At this rate by 2014, when the new health bill kicks in and 30 million more Americans buy health insurance, Big Insurance will be really Big.

In light of all this, you’d think the insurance industry would be subject to the antitrust laws, so the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission could prevent it from combining into one or two national behemoths that suck every health dollar out of our pockets (as well as the pockets of companies paying part of the cost of their employees’ health insurance). But no. Remarkably, the Senate bill still keeps Big Insurance safe from competition by preserving its privileged exemption from the antitrust laws.

found by Aric Mackey


The baby has a bomb! Duck!

Terror police to monitor nurseries for Islamic radicalisation – Times Online — I’m reminded of the supposed bomb they found on a plane a few years ago and it was blown up by the bomb squad. It was a diaper of poop.

Nursery-age children should be monitored for signs of brainwashing by Islamist extremists, according to a leaked police memo obtained by The Times.

In an e-mail to community groups, an officer in the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit wrote: “I do hope that you will tell me about persons, of whatever age, you think may have been radicalised or be vulnerable to radicalisation … Evidence suggests that radicalisation can take place from the age of 4.”

The police unit confirmed that counter-terrorist officers specially trained in identifying children and young people vulnerable to radicalisation had visited nursery schools.

Found by Zack.


Click to enlarge.

Global Temperature Trends Since 2500 B.C. — This stuff keeps coming in and nobody wants to hear it.

From the late 1940s through the early 1970s, a climate research organization called the Weather Science Foundation of Crystal Lake, Illinois, determined that the planet’s warm, cold, wet and dry periods were the result of alternating short-term and long-term climatic cycles. These researchers and scientists also concluded that the Earth’s ever-changing climate likewise has influenced global and regional economies, human and animal migrations, science, religion and the arts as well as shifting forms of government and strength of leadership.Much of this data was based upon thousands of hours of research done by Dr. Raymond H. Wheeler and his associates during the 1930s and 1940s at the University of Kansas. Dr. Wheeler was well-known for his discovery of various climate cycles, including his highly-regarded ‘510-Year Drought Clock’ that he detailed at the end of the ‘Dust Bowl’ era in the late 1930s.During the early 1970s, our planet was in the midst of a colder and drier weather cycle. Inflationary recessions and oil shortages led to rationing and long gas lines at service stations worldwide. The situation at that time was far worse than it is now, at least for the time being.

Found by D. Hoop.


Indonesians have paid tribute to Barack Obama on the eve of his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. A statue of the U.S. President, who lived in Jakarta, has been unveiled in a park in the Indonesian capital.

The almost life-size statue depicts a 10-year-old Obama, wearing school-boy shorts with his outstretched hand holding up a butterfly…

“We imagined Barry, and we thought the story would be inspirational to all Indonesian children that when you dream big, they can come true,” said Ron Mullers, chairman of the nonprofit group Friends of Obama.

Next month, the citizens of Montana unveil a statue of Dick Cheney as a 10-year-old schoolboy – pulling the wings off a fly.


blackittyxl
Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret Raids by the C.I.A. – NYT — How long till they are ‘assisting’ the CIA on domestic operations?

Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.

The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations, the former employees and current and former intelligence officers said.

Several former Blackwater guards said that their involvement in the operations became so routine that the lines supposedly dividing the Central Intelligence Agency, the military and Blackwater became blurred. Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, they say, Blackwater personnel at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.
[…]
The secret missions illuminate a far deeper relationship between the spy agency and the private security company than government officials had acknowledged. Blackwater’s partnership with the C.I.A. has been enormously profitable for the North Carolina-based company, and became even closer after several top agency officials joined Blackwater.

“It became a very brotherly relationship,” said one former top C.I.A. officer. “There was a feeling that Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency.”


Perhaps the architect should have thought about the effects of sunlight and shadow on his design.

Found by Art Snyder.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41zwRhbyLTL.jpg

On October 24th I bought this new HP laptop with Windows 7 on it. Two days ago it died hard. Had a few internet connection problems and it got a confused connection to a remote share. Usually a reboot clears that up, so before I rebooted I decided to check to see if there were any updates to download and there were two. I downloaded and rebooted and it seemed to be hung up after not booting up to a login prompt. So I powered it down as that tends to get Windows to repair itself and it came up to an HP recovery utility that HP had added.

I have to admit that I wasn’t paying close attention and one of the choices was “Restore”. In the windows world sometime when it crashes it asks to go back to a “restore point” or things like the way it was on the last good boot and such and I sad yes and it began formatting my drive without any working.

http://revolver360.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/android-254x300.jpg

Still fairly happy with my Droid. About 10 am today my phone informed me that it downloaded an upgrade and asked if I wanted to install it now or later. I said now and it upgraded itself just like they said it would when I bought it. Not yet noticing any great improvement, in fact the phone seems a little weirder. Had a number of dropped calls and the screen going blank during a call and having a hard time waking it up so I can hang up. Maybe it’s a coincidence.

So – any other Android users want to talk about the upgrade? I’m still hoping that I can get it to become a WIFI hotspot like you can with Windows Mobile.


  • Game sales down, down, down.
  • Dinos all came from South America.
  • FCC baffled by complaints.
  • Tri-band Wi-Fi coming soon.
  • HP gets more PR.
  • Cracking the cloud.
  • Acer gets on Android bandwagon.

Do a website this week!
Check it out at www.squarespace.com
and use the code TECH for a big discount.

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Myostatin is a critical gene in the human body that plays a regulatory role in many processes, including the deposition of fatty tissue. It also blocks muscle growth. Animals or humans born without the gene show freakish muscular growth and the ability to perform athletic feats that take their peers years of dedication and training.

Of course all that comes at a price. […] Those with an unusually high amount of muscle have been shown to live to shorter lifespans in some studies, potentially due to increased rates of organ failure.

Undeterred, researchers are pushing ahead to look at ways to block myostatin and make us into supermen (and women). Researchers at the National Children’s Hospital (NCH) and Ohio State University have demonstrated how gene therapy can be used to selectively upregulate follistatin in muscles according to Singularity Hub. Fullistatin blocks myostatin, allowing for tremendous gains. The macaque monkeys involved in the trial were endowed with super biceps.

The center is now filing the preliminary paperwork to start human trials.


The TSA will love this: “Do you promise not to blow up a plane today?”
IRS: “Do you promise you don’t owe more?”
Employer to job seeker: “Do you promise not to steal and to work hard?”

Promises are made to be broken, so it can be tough to tell which ones will be kept. But new-found patterns in brain activity can reveal whether someone intends to keep their word.

The finding raises the possibility of using brain scans to determine the true intentions of criminals who are up for early release on parole, according to Thomas Baumgartner of the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

He and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to catch promise-breakers in the act.
[…]
The fMRI data revealed that certain brain areas became more active when trustees were breaking a promise. These regions – the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala – are known to be involved in emotion. They could reveal an emotional conflict in a person who knows they are doing something wrong, or feels guilty, says Baumgartner.


popcontrol-81909

The “inconvenient truth” overhanging the UN’s Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.

The world’s other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed and pushed out of existence as a result of humanity’s soaring reproduction rate.

Ironically, China, despite its dirty coal plants, is the world’s leader in terms of fashioning policy to combat environmental degradation, thanks to its one-child-only edict.

The intelligence behind this is the following:

-If only one child per female was born as of now, the world’s population would drop from its current 6.5 billion to 5.5 billion by 2050, according to a study done for scientific academy Vienna Institute of Demography.

-By 2075, there would be 3.43 billion humans on the planet. This would have immediate positive effects on the world’s forests, other species, the oceans, atmospheric quality and living standards.

-Doing nothing, by contrast, will result in an unsustainable population of nine billion by 2050.


That background music sounds a lot like pr0n background music…


A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled. Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave – although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet. The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its center – lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely.

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm – which astronomers have said did not appear to have been connected to the aurora, or Northern Lights, so common in that area of the world. The mystery deepened tonight as Russia denied it had been conducting missile tests in the area.

Swamp gas.

Found by Ian Warner.


  • Smartphone usage ruining the net.
  • Sun Oracle still being debated.
  • Apple Tablet coming in March.
  • Nokia to close stores.
  • Bats ruining it for the rest of us.
  • Net usage is 3.6 zetabytes per year.
  • Twitter dev conference announced.

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