I love the idea of colonizing Mars, including the idea that people should be committing to a one-way trip at some point. But this proposal is just grim and stupid. Sending volunteers over 65 because you have no idea how to shield them successfully from radiation is not the start of a second sustainable human world. It sends no message other than "we have no idea how to make this work, and we don't expect we will figure it out."

What's the next "bold step" after dumping a few elderly volunteers on Mars to certainly die of radiation-induced cancer and/or equipment failure within five years? Dropping a suicidal hang-gliding enthusiast on Titan? What does that prove, at a cost of hundreds of billions?

This story points out the key reality of hopes for space colonization: we have to understand how to create a viable closed ecology first. And that is a project with huge benefits for human survival and sustainability here on Earth. Funds intended for humanity's future in space should be put to that purpose first while a viable solution for creating a large, radiation-shielded colony is developed— something that might well require von neumann machines. We've got time to work on the ecology problem in the meanwhile.

(The author of that article isn't really "at NASA," and it's a bit of a "modest proposal" I suspect. Still, it points out some serious problems with the current round of "let's just go back to the moon / on to Mars / who cares if it makes any sense" thinking.)

Tags: environment, mars, politics, space, stupid, sustainability

Maybe the votes just aren't there for the "public plan." Set aside the frustration of that for a moment. What might be doable and worthwhile?

I think the following would be a huge improvement on where we are now:

1. Health insurance plans should be purchased directly by individuals, not employers, and should be valid across state lines as long as the insurer operates there. Health insurance payments should be tax-deductible. Your employer can just pay you more instead of offering that benefit. More importantly, your insurer shouldn't know, care, or be permitted to care when you change employers.

2. Any rules that make it harder for insurers to operate in multiple states need to go away.

3. All insurers should cover all of their customers as a single pool, and shouldn't be allowed to refuse customers, drop coverage or change rates due to preexisting conditions. This is the big one. Without it any individual insurer who offers a single pool will have all of their healthy customers cherrypicked by those who do not. This is what happened to the nonprofits that tried to hold out and make a stand on that principle. I still have the letter from Blue Cross explaining why they had to switch to the cherry-picking, sick-people-pay-more policy. The letter pointed out that they were the last insurer in the tri-state region not to do so.

"Will this encourage people to engage in high-risk behavior?" You mean like getting old?

Seriously, people have other motives to limit high-risk behavior. Like seeing their grandchildren graduate. Or being able to enjoy sex again ever. And if insurers have to cover these people, then insurers will be motivated to help them get healthy.

4. Insurers should be required to cover a certain list of treatments for certain conditions. Yes, they should be able to refuse million-dollar unproven treatments, and there's room for agreeing to cover more for a price. But without a fundamental "must cover" list like this, insurers can avoid the old and the ill simply by not covering their conditions.

5. Yes, damage awards in malpractice suits should be limited. No, this won't solve the problem all by itself, but it'll help, and conservatives will vote for it. By "limited" I don't mean "limited to five bucks and a playful swat on the ass."

6. Doctor visit copays are good. They shouldn't be unaffordable but it's good to give people a reason to stay out of their doctor's office unless they are sick. $25 is a good number.

Under the above conditions, nonprofits (including "co-ops") would have a better shot at actually operating in the public interest because they wouldn't be "competed" into the ground by companies whose competitive advantage is refusing to insure sick people. This is the problem with "nonprofit" insurers today. If #3 and #4 are implemented, the environment will be very different, so it's not really fair to compare the behavior of Blue Cross today to what health insurance co-ops might look like after reform.

Now, back to the public plan option:

With the above in place, a public plan could be more easily created, either now or later— because the cost of insurance would be lower. The government (or a state government) could simply choose to purchase health insurance plans from companies operating under the above rules.

Thoughts? Tomatoes? Campaign contributions?

Tags: health, health insurance, politics

... Beginning with a fantastic response to a chick who showed up with a picture of Obama with a Hitler 'stache.

Barney Frank for President of everything.

Tags: barney frank, health insurance, politics

From a recent email received by Phillycarshare members (one of whom kindly forwarded it to this former member):

... We immediately removed the most damaging members and then began to make strategic changes that would ensure that membership was limited to those with whom the rest of us would want to and could afford to share the costs of vehicle ownership. Along those lines, we instituted a monthly membership fee that, while unpopular, was effective at accomplishing that...

We admit that we didn’t communicate all of these changes or their reasons as effectively as we should have; we probably lost some responsible members as a result of it. Of course, we welcome them back, and we’re constantly working to hear the concerns of our existing members and adapt to them as best we can. We have already held two community forums (with more already scheduled), and we are beginning to call lapsed members whose usage history suggests that they may have quit more out of frustration with our communication than dissatisfaction with PhillyCarShare itself.


There, was that so hard?

I'll be renewing my membership shortly.

Tags: car sharing, cars, environment, phillycarshare, politics

Buzz Aldrin calls bullshit on NASA's plans to return to the moon for another photo op and urges the US to commit to something a little more ambitious... like, y'know, PERMANENT COLONIZATION OF MARS. And he's not kidding about the permanent part: he calls for manned Mars missions to be one-way affairs. It's vastly cheaper, and you know there are people on this planet who desire nothing more.

Aldrin (the second man on the moon) has a space gearhead's point of view, which is fine and necessary, but he doesn't mention the greenest reason to commit NASA to sending astronauts to Mars on a one-way, this-is-home-now basis: it's pretty much impossible to colonize the red planet without mastering the science of sustainable ecology. Once you can make life on freakin' Mars sustainable, cleaning up any blighted chunk of Earth's landscape looks like a darn cheap opportunity.

Tags: politics, space

My father kept a livejournal during the last months of his life. This piece stands out:

"At age seventeen, I joined the Navy. I knew I didn't have the self discipline skills for college, and I needed to live and work in a disciplined setting.

I served for three years, mainly in the Caribean with some duty aboard ships from other nations. It was a blast. It ended abruptly in October 1962 with the Cuban Missle Crisis. I spent two weeks, largely under a twenty+ year old radar system, trying to make it work, on board an even older destroyer, the USS Sauffley. Real work, under real pressure conditions. We watched Soviet freighters pass in the straits of Cuba. The great news is, they blinked.

So, even though my service was largely peaceful, I too, am a veteran, and a patriot.
And I also want to know HOW DARE THEY DRAG OUR GOOD NAME THROUGH THE TORTURE OF ABU GHRAIB!! HOW DARE THEY TAKE THE FLAG I LOVE AND DISAVOW THE GENEVA CONVENTION TO SUPPORT A WAR FOUGHT UNDER FALSE PRETENSES.

I WANT MY FLAG BACK!

Love- Prayer helps."

Dad died in June of '04.

I'm trotting this piece out not so much to politicize my old man (he did that very well all on his own, thank you), but to explain where I'm coming from a little bit.

Tags: dad, father's day, politics

COMPARE... AND... CONTRAST!

Barack Obama.



Jimmy Carter.

Tags: animals, carter, obama, politics, presidents

If you steal the election, don't forget to let the other guy win in his own hometown. It looks kind of bad if you don't.

Tags: election, iran, politics

To steal a Presidential election in the United States, the vote has to be damn close to begin with. And then maybe, maybe you can steal it. But fake a healthy margin? Like a 10% margin? No dice. The exit polling would be enough to get you caned. And the state-by-state patchwork of election laws mean that you couldn't undo a national landslide without tipping your hand. The best you can do is steal a swing state or two.

To steal an election in Iran, all you have to do is cut off phone and text messaging service and anything else that might get the word out that you stole the election.

But all of this depends on the existence of a fourth estate that actually has the resources to verify anything. A patchwork of bloggers will not cut it alone. And journalism is going through a real rough patch in the US.

Makes me want to subscribe to a daily newspaper again. Even if the bastards seem incapable of delivering them before it's time to leave for work.

Tags: elections, iran, politics, united states

Not bad, Claire's. Eleanor is currently in a mostly-ungirly mood, but that could change, and it's nice to know there are marketers thinking outside the box. Looks like the Barbie Liberation Organization won't have to put them up against the wall when the revolution comes.

Tags: barbie, culture, feminism, math, parenting, politics