Wealthy, Healthy, and Wise July 17, 2007March 8, 2017 HOW RICH ARE YOU? Apples, oranges and all that – but I love this site. Click here. (Thanks, Steve!) HOW SICK ARE YOU? Click here for a two-minute news clip and decide how much value you think Aetna Insurance added to this guy’s health care and quality of life. (And what kind of system it is that puts so much time and effort into denying coverage for removal of a tumor. Is the goal not to remove them? Or to force you into bankruptcy as your punishment for growing one?) With thousands more votes cast, IMDB still has SiCKO beating out all the others. (Three thousand more people have ranked Harry Potter since I last looked – but it still gets 8.1 stars, as before, to SiCKO’s 8.5.) HOW MUCH DO YOUR KIDS KNOW ABOUT SEX? Agh! I’m feeling uncomfortable even broaching the question, and I don’t even know your kids. Have you had ‘the talk’ with them? Icky, icky, icky. Does their school provide sex ed? Probably not. Well . . . now comes sexetc.org, written by teenagers for teenagers, with everything from a glossary of terms (oh, my!), to videos, to moderated forums, and more – including a special section for kids in crisis. There were 2,302 visitors signed on when I checked just now. Some of them were probably parents checking out the site, as you should, before suggesting it to your kids.
8.5 Stars, $8.50 a Share July 16, 2007March 8, 2017 SiCKO Hey, so have you seen the movie? It’s funny, charming, wonderfully human – and, at the very, very least, thought provoking. Plus, the facts are right. I don’t know if you’ve followed the CNN flap between Michael Moore and their medical correspondent, but basically, even while saying that Moore fudged some of the facts, he largely agrees with Moore. And the ‘fudge’ turns out to be so trivial, in my view, as to be little more than ‘argumentative’ (as the lawyers would say). Here’s how the 10 movies playing at my local theater ranked this past weekend – out of a possible 10 stars – based on 123,171 votes by IMDB website visitors nationwide: Sicko 8.5 / 10 (9,857 votes) Harry Potter 8.1 / 10 (13,306 votes) Knocked Up 8.1 / 10 (25,021 votes) Transformers 8.0 / 10 (45,089 votes) Talk to Me 7.7 / 10 (232 votes) Ocean’s Thirteen 7.3 / 10 (19,498 votes) Evening 7.1 / 10 (869 votes) A Mighty Heart 6.6 (1,792 votes) Evan Almighty 6.0 / 10 (5,946 votes) License to Wed 5.3 / 10 (1,561 votes) Granted, this sample is biased in favor of bright people who actually use the Internet and care enough about movies to rank them. But you’re a bright person who uses the Internet – so see the frickin’ movie! BOREF From the latest weekly Borealis update comes a link to Friday’s AXI press release (‘Advanced Explorations Inc. Drilling Identifies Mineralized Zone of 230 Metres’) in which AXI ‘is pleased to announce that the Company has completed the first three holes of a proposed 15,000m drill program.’ It gets dauntingly specific (and, to the layman, entirely opaque) until you reach, ‘Drilling to date has identified two zones of semi-massive to massive banded iron formation’ – massive sounds good – and: ‘We are very encouraged by the drill results.’ Not to say one expects downbeat press releases from a Canadian mining company. But . . . Gary Williams P. Geo and VP of Advanced Explorations Inc is the QP within the meaning of 43-101. The geologic information within this release is in part extracted from a qualifying report filed on Sedar (Paul Palmer, et al of Golder Associates Ltd.). The content of this release has been reviewed by the QP who approves the content of this release. ‘QP’ is short for ‘Qualified Person’ and ’43-101′ refers to a Canadian regulation that requires Qualified Persons – engineers who have demonstrated their competence and integrity – to sign off on such things. So I tend to think there may really be a 40-man camp and two drills working away on our behalf up there, and that progress is being made. Meanwhile, the Roche Bay annual report is now on line – with a cover photo of our barren (not to say Godforsaken) landscape – as are the annual reports of the other Borealis subsidiaries: Chorus Motors (which notes that its revenues derived from sale of shares, not products), Cool Chips (‘We have enormous demand. But we don’t have product.’), Power Chips (‘over the past year, we have been working to explore the limits of the underlying theory’), Faraway (indeed), and Photon Power (‘another year of watching and waiting’). Also, the latest presentation from Avto Metals (‘It was shown that, ridged geometry of the wall leads to Quantum Interference Depression (QID), or reduction of the density of quantum states for the free electron. Wave-vector density in k space is reduced within the entire Fermi sphere. . . . Recent experiments demonstrated a reduction of work function in thin films of Au, Nb, Cr and SiO2. Experimental results are in good qualitative agreement with the theory.’) As easy as it is to make fun of all this, I haven’t sold a single share and continue to think that – as speculations go, at $8.50 for each of 5 million shares – this one is as intriguing (and surely as bizarre) as they come. But as with any speculation, there is the very real risk of losing all your money.
Serge Protectors (No, Really!) July 13, 2007March 8, 2017 But first . . . LIBBY David D’Antonio: ‘You wrote: ‘He took the fall. (Except now doesn’t have to.)’ If you don’t consider paying a quarter of a million dollars and having your career and reputation trashed ‘not taking a fall,’ I guess there is no point in further discussion. I disagree with a lot of what the Bush Administration has done, but all the whining, harping and other such finger-pointing you do has certainly turned me off to the Democrats.’ ☞ To someone in Libby’s position, and with Libby’s friends, a $250,000 fine is trivial. And his reputation among many of the people he cares about is, if anything, enhanced. PARTISANSHIP Richard Theriault: ‘You write: ‘And fourth . . . treading now out onto thin ice but thinking it may actually hold my weight (and welcoming anything icy on a day like this even a metaphor) . . . yes, Democrats, certainly from 1993-2000, were generally pretty darn good, and Republicans from election night 2000 on up to the last news reports I read a few minutes ago have been bad. Not individual Republicans like you, of course; but this Administration? And the Republican legislators who’ve abetted it? The worst in the history of our country, with the most disastrous long-reaching consequences. Just my view, of course, but heartfelt.’ DAMN STRAIGHT! (You should excuse the expression, please.) It’s not a matter of parties, one good the other bad. God knows, the Democrats can’t get their act together, and they need to. But THIS crop of Republicans, who have disgraced the party’s name, could ruin this nation forever. I’ve been a registered Republican since 1948, when I turned 21. THESE are not Republicans, they are perverters and destroyers, and it gave me the greatest pleasure, though I know it will probably do no good, to sign the petition to impeach Cheney. We cannot impeach Bush (the worst in history) because that would leave us with Cheney, a greater evil – well, actually an evil instead of a mere incompetency. BTW, loved the Hertzberg New Yorker excerpt.” BURNING YOUR HOUSE DOWN Jim Reed: “I have a friend that also had the fire department ‘practice’ on his house. However, before the big burn he had a ‘prefire sale’ during which people could go through the house and buy anything they wanted, doorknobs, woodtrim, etc. etc.” Don Stromquist: “In the historic preservation community (nthp.org), we feel the case is very strong that to rehab an old building is almost always a greener option than to tear it down, no matter how environmentally sound the new construction may be. Think of all that material (all that embedded energy) going to the landfill. By burning their house, your friends hit on the least green option of all: all that energy, straight into the sky.” ☞ When a hedge fund manager buys a $2 million tear-down to build an $8 million house, he is under no illusion, I think, that he’s living light on the land. Stewart Dean: “My wife has a fixation on old houses. Me, as the guy that has to do the fixing, I loathe them. I cut my teeth in plumbing and electrical contracting doing maintenance on an old Borscht Belt hotel. Nothing was clean and tight, everything leaked water or air (cold in the winter, hot in the summer), the electric was a joke, and you couldn’t fix much of it with the now standard materials and methods. The fixing was endless, much like the human body over 80 – you might as well buy the hospital. So, if you have a house more than 75 years old and don’t have a mint of money, burning it down and rebuilding clean and tight can save you money and endless aggravation. Of course if it’s a gorgeous old Victorian (you’ll be paying painting and de-rotting bills forever, but the house pride!) or a stone house…….. Now I have a 25-year-old house, and it’s easy to deal with.” SiCKO For your consideration: SiCKO Spurs Audiences Into Action By Josh Tyler / Cinema Blend Long time readers of this site no doubt know that I live in Texas. As everyone knows there’s no more conservative state in the Union than here. And I don’t just live in Texas; I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Dallas isn’t some pocket of hippy-dippy behavior. This isn’t Austin. Dallas is the sort of place where guys in cowboy hats still drive around in giant SUVs with “W” stickers on the back windshield, global warming and Iraq be damned. It’s probably the only spot left in America where you stand a good chance of getting the crap kicked out of you for badmouthing the president. So when I went to see SiCKO for a second time this afternoon, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the audience. I wasn’t watching it downtown, where the city’s few elitist liberals congregate and drink expensive lattes. I went to a random mall in the mid-cities, where folks were likely to be just folks. As I sat down, right behind me entered an obligatory cowboy hat-wearing redneck in his 50s. He announced his presence by shouting across the theater in a thick Texasdrawl to his already seated wife, “You owe me fer seein this!” SiCKO started; the stereotypical Texas guy sat down behind me and never stopped talking. He talked through the entire movie… and I listened. The first ten to twenty minutes of the film he spent badmouthing Moore to his wife and snorting in disgust whenever MM went into one of his trademark monologues. But as the movie wore on his protestations became quieter, less enthusiastic. Somewhere along the way, maybe at the half way point, right before my ears, SiCKO changed this man’s mind. By the forty-five minute mark, he, along with the rest of the audience were breaking into spontaneous applause.He stopped pooh-poohing the movie and started shouting out hell yeah! at the screen. It was as if the whole world had been flipped upside down. This is Texas, where people support the president and voting democratic is something only done by the terrorists. Michael Moore should be public enemy number one. By the time the movie was over, public enemy number one had become George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy all rolled together. When the credits rolled the audience filed out and into the bathrooms. At the urinals, my redneck friend couldn’t stop talking about the film, and I kept listening. He struck up a conversation with a random black man in his 40s standing next to him, and soon everyone was peeing and talking about just how f-cked everything is. I kept my distance, as we all finished and exited at the same time. Outside the restroom doors… the theater was in chaos. The entire SiCKO audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here these people were, complete strangers from every walk of life talking excitedly about the movie. It was as if they simply couldn’t go home without doing something drastic about what they’d just seen. My redneck compadre and his new friend found their wives at the center of the group, while I lingered in the background waiting for my spouse to emerge. The talk gradually centered around a core of 10 or 12 strangers in a cluster while the rest of us stood around them listening intently to this thing that seemed to be happening out of nowhere. The black gentleman engaged by my redneck in the restroom shouted for everyone’s attention. The conversation stopped instantly as all eyes in this group of 30 or 40 people were now on him. If we just see this and do nothing about it, he said, then what’s the point? Something has to change. There was silence, then the redneck’s wife started calling for email addresses. Suddenly everyone was scribbling down everyone else’s email, promising to get together and do something… though no one seemed to know quite what. It was as if I’d just stepped into the world’s most bizarre protest rally, except instead of hippies the group was comprised of men and women of every age, skin color, income, and walk of life coming together on something that had shaken them deeply, and to the core. In my years on this earth, I have never ever seen any movie have this kind of unifying effect on people. It was like I was standing there, at the birth of a new political movement. Even after 9/11, there was never a reaction like this, at least not in Texas. If SiCKO truly has this sort of power, then Michael Moore has done something beyond amazing. If it can change people, affect people like this in the conservative hotbed of Texas, then SiCKO isn’t just a great movie, seeing it may be one of the most important things you do all year. And now . . . SURGE PROTECTORS Michael Albert: “I know a little bit about surge protectors and lightning. When two houses close to ours were hit by lightning a few years ago, I installed lightning rods on our house. The installation included the lightning rods, wiring together all big or long chunks of metal (e.g. bulkhead doors, drain spouts), and an air gap surge arrestor at the power entry. I also added individual surge protectors on expensive equipment. Then we were hit by lightning. First came the loudest crash of thunder I’ve ever heard, and then our burglar alarm immediately went off. There was no fire: the lightning rods did their job in that respect. The power stayed on, but the phone wasn’t working (because the lightning had fried the TiVo modem), shorting out the phone line. After it was all over I discovered that two burglar alarm switches had welded closed, another faulted intermittently, the alarm panel had an intermittent fault in the phone dial-out circuitry, a phone had failed, the TiVo modem had failed, and the power block for my WiFi router was gone. The TV’s and computers protected by power strips were OK. I fixed the alarm panel and switches myself. If I hadn’t I would have dumped quite a bit of money fixing the alarm system. Happily TiVos can use an external modem, so I didn’t have to replace the whole thing. After fixing everything I looked into better protection. It turns out you should have three levels of power protection: first, an air gap surge arrestor, a cheap, small device that drains off the highest voltages via arcing across an air gap to ground, installed at the power entry by an electrician. The power meter should already have one built in, but you can add one that fires at a lower voltage to get redundancy and better protection. Second, a transient voltage surge suppressor (TVSS), a more expensive device that also is installed at the power entry by an electrician. The more money you spend here the better protection you get. I spent about $200 for this one. Third, individual surge suppressors installed to protect individual pieces of equipment. You also need a surge suppressor on the telephone line. This device is installed where the phone line enters the home. I installed this one myself. I’ve got all these now, and happily have yet to test them. I expect that the next time I get hit, my phone equipment (including my precious TiVos) and power will be OK, but I’ll still have the potential for alarm problems. I don’t think there’s much to do about that.” ☞ But what are the chances lightning will strike twice? SERGE PROTECTORS Most fundamentally, there is the napkin. You could go a step further and ScotchGuard it, but Charles tells me this is a ridiculous idea and that I shouldn’t try so hard for the pun. (I don’t know – 3M seems to think it’s not such a bad idea.) Now . . . go out and see the movie.
Chlibby July 12, 2007March 8, 2017 LIBBY As previously mentioned, he’s probably a very nice guy, certainly a very bright guy, who first threw himself into the task of getting a Presidential pardon for his client Marc Rich – now there’s a satisfying use of a year of one’s life on earth – and who until recently was the faithful number two to his ‘client’ Dick Cheney, for whom, many of us believe, he ‘took the fall.’ (Except now doesn’t have to.) CHENEY Rick Hertzberg in The New Yorker . . . . . . for the past six years, Dick Cheney, the occupant of what John Adams called ‘the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived,’ has been the most influential public official in the country, not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely malign. He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable ‘war on terror.’ More than anyone else, including his mentor and departed co-conspirator, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney has been the intellectual author and bureaucratic facilitator of the crimes and misdemeanors that have inflicted unprecedented disgrace on our country’s moral and political standing: the casual trashing of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions; the claim of authority to seize suspects, including American citizens, and imprison them indefinitely and incommunicado, with no right to due process of law; the outright encouragement of ‘cruel,’ ‘inhuman,’ and ‘degrading’ treatment of prisoners; the use of undoubted torture, including waterboarding (Cheney: ‘a no-brainer for me’), which for a century the United States had prosecuted as a war crime; and, of course, the bloody, nightmarish Iraq war itself, launched under false pretenses, conducted with stupefying incompetence, and escalated long after public support for it had evaporated, at the cost of scores of thousands of lives, nearly half a trillion dollars, and the crippling of America’s armed forces, which no longer overawe and will take years to rebuild. The stakes are lower in domestic affairs-if only because fewer lives are directly threatened-but here, too, Cheney’s influence has been invariably baleful. With an avalanche of examples, Gellman and Becker show how Cheney successfully pushed tax cuts for the very rich that went beyond what even the President, wanly clinging to the shards of ‘compassionate conservatism,’ and his economic advisers wanted. They show how Cheney’s stealthy domination of regulatory and environmental policy, driven by ‘unwavering ideological positions’ and always exerted ‘for the benefit of business,’ has resulted in the deterioration of air and water quality, the degradation and commercial exploitation of national parks and forests, the collapse of wild-salmon fisheries, and the curt abandonment of Bush’s 2000 campaign pledge to do something about greenhouse gases. They also reveal that it was Cheney who forced Christine Todd Whitman to resign as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, by dictating a rule that excused refurbished power plants and oil refineries from installing modern pollution controls. ‘I just couldn’t sign it,’ she told them. Turns out she wasn’t so anxious to spend more time with her family after all. Cheney, Gellman and Becker report, drew up and vetted a list of five appellate judges from which Bush drew his Supreme Court appointments. After naming John Roberts to the Court and then to the Chief Justice’s chair, the President, for once, rebelled: without getting permission from down the hall, he nominated his old retainer Harriet Miers for the second opening. (‘Didn’t have the nerve to tell me himself,’ Cheney muttered to an associate, according to the Post.) But when Cheney’s right-wing allies upended Miers, Bush obediently went back to Cheney’s list and picked Samuel Alito. The result is a Court majority that, last Thursday, ruled that conscious racial integration is the moral equivalent of conscious racial segregation. That unfortunate day in the duck blind wasn’t the only time the Vice-President has seemed more Elmer Fudd than Ernst Blofeld; last week, Cheney provoked widespread hilarity by pleading executive privilege (in order to deny one set of documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee) while simultaneously maintaining that his office is not part of the executive branch (in order to deny another set to the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives). On Cheney’s version of the government organization chart, it seems, the location of the Office of the Vice-President is undisclosed. So are the powers that, in a kind of rolling, slow-motion coup d’état, he has gathered unto himself. The laughter will fade quickly; the current Administration, regrettably, will not. However more politically moribund it may become, its writ still has a year and a half to go. A few weeks ago, on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, the Vice-President issued threats of war with Iran. A ‘senior American diplomat’ told the Times that Cheney’s speech had not been circulated broadly in the government before it was delivered, adding, ‘He kind of runs by his own rules.’ But, too often, his rules rule. The awful climax of ‘Cheney/Bush’ may be yet to come. LIBBY AGAIN From Bill Press’s column: . . . letting Scooter Libby off the hook contradicts both established penalties for obstruction of justice and the affirmed policies of the Bush Justice Department. Of 198 people convicted for obstructing justice in 2006, 154 were sentenced to an average term of six years – yet not one of those sentences did Bush consider “too severe.” In fact, for the last six years, in hundreds of cases, Bush’s Justice Department has consistently argued that federal sentencing guidelines must remain tough and inflexible. Former baseball great Willie Mays Aikens, for example, has already served 144 months [12 years!] of a 248 month sentence for one offense of dealing crack cocaine. Hall of Famer Cal Ripken is one of many who have urged the Justice Department to acknowledge the excessive severity of Aikens’ sentence and grant him clemency. The Bush administration refuses. Too bad Aikens never worked at the White House. . . . John: ‘Here we go again . . . It seems with you, there are only two rules to politics: 1. Democrats are good. 2. Republicans are bad. I realize you are have a significant role in the Democratic Party, but seriously, be at least objective about these things. I read your column regularly and never saw you opine concerning the light punishment Sandy Berger received for stealing government documents to protect his and Clinton’s reputation. What Libby did (failure to remember accurately or possibly perjury) pales in comparison to Berger’s crime, yet Libby gets a much harsher punishment. Yet you never once excoriated the light punishment meted out on Berger. Think of the outrage you and other Democrat partisans would have had if Karl Rove had been caught stealing government documents.’ ☞ I’m no expert in the Berger case, which may be a little less clear than you think (click here), but apart from joining you in condemning any wrongdoing, I think it’s worth noting a few things. First, Berger’s light treatment, if it was that, was a plea bargain negotiated by the Bush Justice Department (during a time when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress). I suppose I could have condemned the Bush Justice Department for going easy on Sandy Berger, but not knowing that he did any more than remove copies of documents and his own notes, I’m not sure how serious this all really was. The Bush Justice Department presumably had a lot better insight into what Berger did and did not do. (According to this conservative blog, at least some of the copies he took were of documents that had been faxed to the archives by the Clinton Library itself. Hardly sounds like a Clinton cover-up.) Second, whatever Berger did had nothing to do with the ongoing affairs of state. The Clinton Administration of which he had been a part was long out of power, calling no shots, starting no wars, discouraging no stem cell research, endangering no wild salmon fisheries (see the Cheney item, above) – whereas Libby was the active #2 guy to the man largely calling all the shots, in disastrous ways. So the two cases are in my view just orders and orders of magnitude apart in their significance. Third, even if they were equivalent in importance (and they absolutely were not), two wrongs really don’t make a right. It shouldn’t be necessary, in decrying the Libby commutation, to have decried the plea bargain the Bush Justice Department struck with Sandy Berger. And fourth . . . treading now out onto thin ice but thinking it may actually hold my weight (and welcoming anything icy on a day like this – even a metaphor) . . . yes, Democrats, certainly from 1993-2000, were generally pretty darn good, and Republicans from election night 2000 on up to the last news reports I read a few minutes ago have been bad. Not individual Republicans like you, of course; but this Administration? And the Republican legislators who’ve abetted it? The worst in the history of our country, with the most disastrous long-reaching consequences. Just my view, of course, but heartfelt. Tomorrow: Lightning Strikes THREE Times
(Burn) This Old House July 11, 2007March 8, 2017 FMD If a plan like this were enacted, it would hurt or possibly even eliminate the long-term prospects for FMD and others in the private student-loan business – but it seems to me it should be enacted anyway. Basically, instead of Uncle Sam guaranteeing student loans – so the taxpayer picks up the tab if you default and companies like FMD and their partner banks pick up the profits if you don’t – Uncle Sam would lend directly to the student, with post-graduation loan payments tacked on to income tax collection . . . but only in years when the grad’s income were high enough. Take a look. (Free registration required by Forbes to access the article.) Absent something like this, I continue to think FMD should have lots of gains ahead of it. And we all know the odds of bucking vested interests in Washington to enact worthwhile reform – in any area – are low. But because I had so much of it, I’ve sold half my FMD just in case. FINANCIAL TIPS FOR THE WELL-TO-DO If your style is more the tear-down than the fixer-upper (well, it’s a great piece of property in a great neighborhood – but who could live in a house like that?!), then my advice to you is: burn your house down. That’s what friends of mine did; and, on consideration, I have to admit it was smart. They bought it; they donated it to the local fire department to use ‘for practice’ (‘what?’ I asked – ‘practice failing to save a burning house?’), the fire department cheerfully burned it to the ground, and my friends got two valuable things: (1) free demolition; (2) a tax-deduction for the value of the house. (Whether the IRS should allow that is another story; apparently, they do for now.) CLIMATE CHANGE Barry: ‘I just got through posting on Moveon.org at their request, regarding my favorite candidate to address climate change. I chose Mike Gravel because he’s least likely to win and waste time and effort trying to change the climate. I am all for a CLEAN environment, but as a LIFELONG Democrat, I am dismayed that we think there is much we can do to reduce what is one of the earth’s massive warming cycles. Here and here are some things you might want to look at. Please read all of it, check out the quoted sources, and then, see if you can get the Party to find something else to worry about, something we might actually be able to fix. God knows, we have plenty of problems.’ ☞ I have read none of it. But since almost all scientists disagree with you, and since (in my view) it would be worth taking action even if there were only a 10% chance disaster looms, let alone a much larger chance – and since most of the actions will just make us more efficient and prosperous, it seems nuts to me that people would oppose these actions. How would it hurt if your car got 80 miles to the gallon? Or if your lighting bill were cut by 75%? SiCKER Scott Nichol: ‘I really want to know how many emergency rooms Michael Moore visited until he found an empty one. It has been my experience that emergency rooms are busy in both the US and Canada.’ ☞ Dunno. Anne Vivino-Hintze: ‘See this from the current BusinessWeek.’ The Doctor Will See You – In Three Months By Catherine Arnst The health-care reform debate is in full roar with the arrival of Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko, which compares the U.S. system unfavorably with single-payer systems around the world. Critics of the film are quick to trot out a common defense of the American way: For all its problems, they say, U.S. patients at least don’t have to endure the endless waits for medical care endemic to government-run systems. The lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans spells it out in a rebuttal to Sicko: “The American people do not support a government takeover of the entire health-care system because they know that means long waits for rationed care.” In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems. Take Susan M., a 54-year-old human resources executive in New York City. She faithfully makes an appointment for a mammogram every April, knowing the wait will be at least six weeks. She went in for her routine screening at the end of May, then had another because the first wasn’t clear. That second X-ray showed an abnormality, and the doctor wanted to perform a needle biopsy, an outpatient procedure. His first available date: mid-August. “I completely freaked out,” Susan says. “I couldn’t imagine spending the summer with this hanging over my head.” After many calls to five different facilities, she found a clinic that agreed to read her existing mammograms on June 25 and promised to schedule a follow-up MRI and biopsy if needed within 10 days. A full month had passed since the first suspicious X-rays. Ultimately, she was told the abnormality was nothing to worry about, but she should have another mammogram in six months. Taking no chances, she made an appointment on the spot. “The system is clearly broken,” she laments. It’s not just broken for breast exams. If you find a suspicious-looking mole and want to see a dermatologist, you can expect an average wait of 38 days in the U.S., and up to 73 days if you live in Boston, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco who studied the matter. Got a knee injury? A 2004 survey by medical recruitment firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates found the average time needed to see an orthopedic surgeon ranges from 8 days in Atlanta to 43 days in Los Angeles. Nationwide, the average is 17 days. “Waiting is definitely a problem in the U.S., especially for basic care,” says Karen Davis, president of the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which studies health-care policy. All this time spent “queuing,” as other nations call it, stems from too much demand and too little supply. Only one-third of U.S. doctors are general practitioners, compared with half in most European countries. On top of that, only 40% of U.S. doctors have arrangements for after-hours care, vs. 75% in the rest of the industrialized world. Consequently, some 26% of U.S. adults in one survey went to an emergency room in the past two years because they couldn’t get in to see their regular doctor, a significantly higher rate than in other countries. There is no systemized collection of data on wait times in the U.S. That makes it difficult to draw comparisons with countries that have national health systems, where wait times are not only tracked but made public. However, a 2005 survey by the Commonwealth Fund of sick adults in six nations found that only 47% of U.S. patients could get a same- or next-day appointment for a medical problem, worse than every other country except Canada. The Commonwealth survey did find that U.S. patients had the second-shortest wait times if they wished to see a specialist or have nonemergency surgery, such as a hip replacement or cataract operation (Germany, which has national health care, came in first on both measures). But Gerard F. Anderson, a health policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, says doctors in countries where there are lengthy queues for elective surgeries put at-risk patients on the list long before their need is critical. “Their wait might be uncomfortable, but it makes very little clinical difference,” he says. The Commonwealth study did find one area where the U.S. was first by a wide margin: 51% of sick Americans surveyed did not visit a doctor, get a needed test, or fill a prescription within the past two years because of cost. No other country came close. Few solutions have been proposed for lengthy waits in the U.S., in part, say policy experts, because the problem is rarely acknowledged. But the market is beginning to address the issue with the rise of walk-in medical clinics. Hundreds have sprung up in CVS, Wal-Mart (WMT), Pathmark, (PTMK) and other stores-so many that the American Medical Assn. just adopted a resolution urging state and federal agencies to investigate such clinics as a conflict of interest if housed in stores with pharmacies. These retail clinics promise rapid care for minor medical problems, usually getting patients in and out in 30 minutes. The slogan for CVS’s Minute Clinics says it all: “You’re sick. We’re quick.” Alan: ‘One issue Michael Moore does not address is how lifestyle choices are affecting our health and health care costs. I’ve taught college for seventeen years now and when I look around a class at the beginning of a semester, young overweight adults have become almost the norm rather than the exception. These kids are all heading for major problems when they reach their 40s and 50s and that is going to be expensive no matter who is paying for it or how.’ Jeff: ‘In 1964, I broke my arm at the elbow. The orthopedic specialist tried to set it but could not, so I spent a month in traction. He visited probably 12 or 15 times, about half of those visits at our house, to make sure the bone was mending correctly. He also set and removed the cast for the two weeks after traction. He charged $100 (albeit $100 1964). I distinctly remember my mother saying we had insurance, but the doctor said, ‘No, that’s all I ever charge.’ I know nothing about solutions, but I do know the level of concern for patients does seem to have changed – along with the doctors’ level of contentment. My strategy for health care is to be rich. Do you have any new buy-and-hold recommendations?’ ☞ As a rank speculation . . . a little HAPNW. As what I hope might be a good two or three years, GLDD. But new ones? No more until you’ve seen the movie.
SiCKER (More SiCKO, That Is) July 10, 2007March 8, 2017 THE VIEW FROM UP NORTH The ‘excitement gap’ bodes well for Democrats. Or so concludes the Toronto Star. BREATHE DEEP But only in certain areas, according to this map. (Thanks, Roger, who thanks Alan.) MORE SiCKO Brad: ‘I am a practicing physician and have spent a lot of my career with lower income patients. Scott got his MRI done the next day because his insurance would pay for it. The doctor ordered it because he knew the result would come quickly and to cover himself for litigious reasons. The hospital was eager to do it because that is income for them. The majority of ‘pinched nerves’ do not require an MRI, they resolve with rest, analgesia, and time. Doing the MRI so quickly is highly unlikely to affect the treatment decision, so that was almost certainly another unnecessary cost to our healthcare system. But if you can get the test done in 24 hours and it doesn’t cost you or the physician anything, then why the hell not? Of course, it is difficult to get an uninsured patient a medically necessary MRI because of all the patients with insurance getting their medically unnecessary MRIs the next day.‘ Michael Irwin: ‘The empire strikes back (softly). [Here is a Blue Cross internal memo.]’ Ed: ‘I don’t know where Sam goes to the hospital, but clearly he has never gone to a hospital in a major metropolitan/suburban area. A six-hour wait is a bargain, and gurneys lining the halls are not an uncommon site in the US. As an EMT, this is a problem that I face almost every day. We have five primary hospitals surrounding our community within 15-minute transport times and two more within 30 minutes. Frequently, our ambulance crews struggle to find a hospital that is not on ‘divert’ or ‘bypass’ because no beds (that includes extra hallway beds) are available. Dispatch reports now come with the list of hospitals that are on ‘bypass.’ Sometimes, ER beds are available but no bed space is available in the hospital to admit patients from the ER. The ER doesn’t want the patients it can’t admit because they ‘board’ in the ER tying up ER beds. In winter, the problem is tremendously worse as people without insurance begin using the ER under EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) as their primary care provider. Some of it is poor administration of the hospitals but a lot is inappropriate patients (uninsured) crowding the ER trying to get basic medical care. I’ve waited 20-30 minutes in a line of ambulance crew stretchers as the hospital staff tried to find beds for the influx of patients. This impacts our ability to care for our community because crews are tied up waiting in hospital ERs to transfer care instead of being available for the next run. This isn’t a problem just in my area but in many areas – and has been discussed frequently in the industry journals.’ Carl: ‘You shouldn’t assume wealthy Canadians are coming to the US for surgery and other care: when I was researching the issue of medical tourism last year, I discovered that many US citizens, as well as Canadians and others in countries with waiting lists for non-emergency procedures, had started traveling to places such as India, Thailand, Costa Rica and South Africa to save huge amounts of money, for approximately the same quality of healthcare. PS – The definitive article on what’s wrong with the US healthcare system, IMO, is Paul Krugman’s in the New York Review of Books, here (‘the evidence clearly shows that the key problem with the US health care system is its fragmentation’).’ From Paul Krugman’s column yesterday: . . . every available indicator says that in terms of quality, access to needed care and health outcomes, the U.S. health care system does worse, not better, than other advanced countries – even Britain, which spends only about 40 percent as much per person as we do. Yes, Canadians wait longer than insured Americans for elective surgery. But over all, the average Canadian’s access to health care is as good as that of the average insured American – and much better than that of uninsured Americans, many of whom never receive needed care at all. And the French manage to provide arguably the best health care in the world, without significant waiting lists of any kind. There’s a scene in ‘Sicko’ in which expatriate Americans in Paris praise the French system. According to the hard data they’re not romanticizing. It really is that good. So . . . have you seen the movie?
I’m Hurt! Call a Clerk! July 9, 2007January 6, 2017 MOWING YOUR ROOF There are several fascinating, encouraging items on the Climate Crisis Coalition news blog this month. Click here to see them (thanks, Stephanie) . . . especially the one about putting a lawn on your roof (can a putting green be far behind?), which would obviously not work for most homes – a house with seven gables, for example, or the house in Psycho – but could be terrific for the roof of the local Jiffy Lube, and hundreds of millions of other square feet. Environment Canada found that a typical one-storey building with a grass roof and 10 centimetres [4 inches] of growing medium [soil] would cut summer cooling needs by 25 percent. Other studies have found that a 15-centimetre green roof reduced heat gains by 95 percent and heat losses by 26 percent compared to a traditional roof. In Germany, which has apparently been pushing this concept for decades, 12% of the flat roofs are already ‘green’ – 3 billion square feet worth, which is a thousand times what have been installed in North America. PEDALING YOUR HOOF And in Paris, they launch this month an ambitious bike rental scheme that, it is hoped, will gain more in traffic and CO2 reduction than it costs in increased emergency room visits. Of course, in France, medical care is free . . . SiCKO Sam R. Linder: ‘In SiCKO, Moore tries to skirt the issue of rationing by going to a Canadian emergency room and finding that people have only had to wait there for 20 minutes. I don’t know what city Mr. Moore was in, nor what hospital, as I haven’t seen his movie yet. However, the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, Canada, was a place where I waited in their emergency room for 6 hours without being seen by a doctor. If I had, I would have been charged $250 because I was a visiting American. The waiting room was full and people were lined up on gurneys in the halls waiting to be seen. It had to have been one of the worst examples of ‘socialized medicine’ I have ever seen. This country would do well to be careful of radically changing our system before considering ALL the implications. As a side note, I’m fortunate enough to be a member/patient of Kaiser Permanente in Oregon and have always received excellent and timely care.’ ☞ Radical change may or may not be an option in the U.S., but it seems to me a few big-picture ideas should help guide the discussion: One is that our system employs something vaguely on the order of a million people to sell and administer health insurance policies – not counting all the time doctors and nurses and employers and patients and hospital employees spend trying to comply. Could those million employees provide an even greater health care benefit if they were, say, nurses? Or do you sometimes find yourself writhing in your hospital bed thinking you have too much nursing care, too few people selling you insurance and denying your claims? Medicare spends about 3% administering itself; Kaiser Permanente, more like 17%; for-profit insurers, more still. Two is that we spend almost twice as much on health care as the French and the Canadians (although we live less long), so for all the flaws we may rightly find in the Canadian system, or the French, there may be some financial wiggle room to correct them. If the Canadians or the French spent more, as we do, their care might be even better than it is. Three is that it is complete madness that Medicare is prohibited – by law! – from using its purchasing power to negotiate low drug prices. (This is, of course, a Republican law that the Democratic Congress is now trying to change.) Yes, big drug companies need big profit incentives. But they don’t need taxpayer subsidies, which is what this mandatory ‘pay-top-dollar’ law effectively is. Four is that not everyone can go to the best doctor in town (what would all the other doctors do?) or have access to the very latest medical equipment (it takes time to build and install enough of a new device to serve the entire population). The two ways I can think of to ration health care are, first, on the basis of need; and second, on a ‘highest-bidder’ basis. In Canada, as I understand it, it is only the former that is used. Those wanting even better or faster care come down to the United States for treatment – if they can afford it. And in that sense, Canada has a two-tiered system without having to admit it. Realistically, America should probably have a two-tiered system, too. We should have outstanding care available to all, especially for acute health needs and preventive care. But we should allow those who want it to pay more to ‘fly first class.’ Private rooms? Private 24-hour nursing? No wait for elective surgery? On one level, it is undemocratic. On another, it is quintessentially American and can be a win-win. If I want to pay five times as much as you to fly to Chicago in the front of the plane (I don’t, by the way; I use frequent-flier upgrades), this is good for both of us. It makes me happy; and it makes the flight cheaper for you. (What it does to my carbon footprint is another issue for another day. Upgrades or no, I drip with guilt.) Five is that there are tremendous inefficiencies in the system which we, of all people, should be able to make more progress wringing out. It’s 2007, people. So I would like to see something like the Canadian system, but more amply funded for even better standard care – and the escape valve of being able to ‘go to America,’ as the Canadians now do, for private care. The two principal challenges, it seems to me, are, first: finding ways to be sure the universal ‘standard’ care is really good (which would include the simple pride and humanity of doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators, but also outcome-based incentives that reward improved results); second, and more difficult: finding a politically feasible way to get from here to there. Finding a way gradually to redirect a million people from clerking to nursing could be part of it. Licensing more med schools (and fewer law schools?) could be another. You really should see SiCKO and join the conversation. Your health – and the competitiveness of our economy – are at stake. Scott Nicol: ‘Haven’t seen it yet, but having lived in both Canada and the US, I can see problems in both systems. A few years ago, complaining of back pain, my doctor determined I had a pinched nerve. He called his secretary to arrange for me to get an MRI. As I was leaving the office, the secretary was on the phone with the MRI clinic, and stopped me to ask if I’d prefer tomorrow morning or afternoon. Can you take a wild guess at which country this took place in? The U.S., of course. In Ottawa, Canada’s capital, the wait for a non-emergency MRI is around five months. BTW, I think both next day and five months ridiculous. Both show poor planning, but in opposite directions.’ ☞ ‘Next day’ is fine with me if someone is willing to pay through the nose for that luxury, making MRIs a little cheaper for the rest of us. Just as long as that never blocks someone who really needs an MRI right now from getting it. Larry: ‘The Slate article referenced by Jim Hannah is refuted here.’ ☞ And very well.
Live! July 6, 2007March 8, 2017 PARDON Here’s the thing: if you’re gonna be the fall guy, you gotta actually take the fall. I’m sure Scooter Libby is a nice man who worked hard for his client and – many suspect – has loyally protected higher ups in the White House. You can see why they wouldn’t want him to serve time for serving them. But if the game is that, as President, you can do something really bad, get someone to take the fall, and then commute that someone’s sentence, you can basically just do anything with impunity. David: ‘I am a lifelong Democrat and I am very disappointed by President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. However, I am angry by the hypocrisy shown by leading Democrats in complaining about it. Where were they when former President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich during the last hours of his presidency?’ ☞ I hear you (and the many others who wrote with a similar sentiment), but I think there are two things wrong with this line of argument. The first is – assuming that the Marc Rich and Scooter Libby cases were equivalent – it suggests that when Republicans do something wrong, they cannot be criticized for it. I suppose in a ‘tit for tat’ situation that line of reasoning could be fair – I stole your cookie so how can I credibly criticize you for stealing it back? But the Rich and Libby pardons are two entirely different, unrelated episodes. It’s possible to be justly critical of both. But that brings us to the second point. The two cases are not equivalent. The Marc Rich case had little national significance, and one of the arguments that can be made – President Clinton made it – is that by allowing him to return to the U.S., the I.R.S. would then be able to go after the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes they claimed he owed. If the I.R.S. prevailed, the taxes would be collected and our Treasury enhanced. And there were apparently other legal arguments on Rich’s side. Ironically, it was Scooter Libby who made them! According to this in the Wall Street Journal, Libby spent a year of his life trying to get Marc Rich pardoned. ‘Leonard Garment, who brought Mr. Libby onto the case in 1985, says that he believes Mr. Libby’s legal work helped set the stage for Mr. Rich’s eventual pardon.’ But even if you agree the Marc Rich pardon was a mistake – and it probably was – are the two cases even remotely equivalent? The Rich case had little national significance. The Libby case, by contrast, goes to the heart of the White House. His work for Marc Rich was a lawyer using his talents to protect a client. He was working for Marc Rich. But in his White House role, he was on our payroll. He should have been working for us. SURGE PROTECTORS Gary Thompson: ‘If you’re interested in a product that works better than all other surge protectors, I’d recommend visiting zerosurge.com. Even though they’re not cheap (I bought three of them for my home), losing a computer, plasma TV or other sensitive electronic device can be far more expensive. Their products have a 0% failure rate. Spend a few minutes and read their testimonials and customer lists. It’s impressive.’ ADOPT-A-CLASSROOM James: ‘I’m writing to ask a favor…to see if you could promote Adopt-A-Classroom on your site during the American Express Members Project voting. We’ve been picked to be in the Top 50 (out of 7,000) with an American Idol style voting to determine the winner on August 7. The winning idea receives a minimum of $1 million and up to $5 million. Here is why I believe our programming is particularly timely and critical: Now more than ever, in light of the most recent Supreme Court ruling that restricts the use of race to integrate public schools, it is critical for concerned citizens to focus on, and support our inner city schools, in order to level the playing field and provide much needed financial resources and moral support for inner city teachers and students. If each one of us were to adopt one classroom, the collective impact would be monumental. Teachers are in dire need of outside support to help their student realize their full potential and meet life’s challenges. To learn how to support Adopt-A-Classroom in the American Express Members Project voting, visit www.adoptaclassroom.org/americanexpress.” ☞ Sure: but what about cleaning up Lake Winnipesaukee? (If you miss that reference, you either don’t watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert – you are missing so much! – or you are even more ruthless in your TiVo commercial-skipping than I am.) Anyway, Adopt-A-Classroom is great, so if you vote for Lake Winnipesaukee, that’s okay – but then go and actually Adopt-A-Classroom yourself. LIVE! Don’t forget to watch Live Earth tomorrow, 7-7-07 (at 7, Central time, 8pm Eastern time on NBC).
Libby-rated July 5, 2007March 8, 2017 HAPNW Tina: ‘Please clarify the date extension for the warrants – you said August 31, but this says July 31.’ ☞ The executive I talked with must have misspoken. But if the S.E.C. takes longer to approve the proxy statement, the both sides would most likely just agree to another extension. RUBBER DUCKS They fell off a boat and have been swimming around the world – thousands of them – ever since. Click here. (Thanks, Peter.) PAUL BEGALA ON SCOOTER LIBBY Did you see this in the Huffington Post, commenting on how tough President Bush is? Tough enough to execute Karla Fay Tucker – and then laugh about it. Tough enough to sign a death warrant for a man whose lawyer slept through the trial – and then snicker when asked about it in a debate. Even tough enough to execute a great-grandmother who murdered her husband – after he abused her. A friend of mine at the time asked Bush to commute her sentence, telling him, “Betty Lou ain’t a threat to no one she ain’t married to.” No dice. Mr. Bush is tough enough to invade a country that was no risk to America, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and shedding precious American blood in the process. Tough enough to sanction torture. Tough enough to order an American citizen arrested and held without trial. But if you’re rich and right-wing and Republican, George is a real softie. As George W. Bush demonstrated in giving Scooter Libby a Get Out of Jail Free Card, he is only compassionate to conservatives. What does it say about America in the age of Bush when Judith Miller spends more time in jail over the Valerie Plame smear than Scooter Libby? BIDEN ON LIBBY Senator Joe Biden emails: . . . President Bush decided to commute Scooter Libby’s 30 month prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice because it was ‘excessive.’ Yet, last year, the Bush administration filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court in an attempt to uphold a lower court’s ruling that a 33 month prison sentence for Victor Rita, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, was ‘reasonable.’ The questions we should all be asking ourselves today are: Why is the President flip-flopping? Why does Scooter Libby get special treatment? George Bush’s disregard for the rule of law is truly unbecoming a President. I’m calling on every American to flood the White House this week with phone calls and tell the President, “In 2000, when you ran for president, you promised to ‘uphold the honor and dignity’ of the office of President of the United States – We’re Still Waiting.” Call the White House: 202-456-1414. DEAN ON LIBBY . . . ROMNEY, GIULIANI, AND THOMPSON DNC Chair Governor Howard Dean emails: Despite overwhelming public opposition, President Bush commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby, the former White House Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney who was convicted by a jury of lying about a matter of national security. . . . Bush doesn’t care that Libby was convicted by a jury of his peers and sentenced by an experienced federal judge, and he doesn’t care that Libby’s sentence was well within the sentencing guidelines set by Congress. He once again ignored over 70% of the American public and disregarded the legal process — this time to help someone who has friends in the right places. . . . The Republican presidential candidates long ago lined up in support of Scooter Libby . . . Rudy Giuliani, who brags of being tough on crime, prosecuted perjury cases as a lawyer and wanted mandatory sentences on people who commit perjury. But yesterday he went out of his way to support Scooter Libby, saying “I believe the decision was correct.” In an interview with the Wall Street Journal editorial board he offered what they said “sounds an awful lot like an argument for a pardon,” and said “I think the option the president really has is commutation.” Mitt Romney [as governor of Massachusetts] never granted a pardon, even for the most trivial offense. But when asked if he would consider pardoning Scooter Libby, Mitt Romney said “It’s worth looking at that. I will study it very closely if I’m lucky enough to be president. And I’d keep that option open.” Yesterday he blamed the prosecutor and completely ignored the jury, saying that “the prosecutor knew that there had not been a crime committed.” Lobbyist Fred Thompson, the ultimate Washington insider, has helped to raise millions of dollars as a chair of Scooter Libby’s legal defense fund. . . . He also said that he would issue a pardon and claimed that Libby’s conviction was “a gross injustice … and it ought to be rectified.” No more. Democrats will bring dignity back to the White House in 2008, but it’s up to us to make sure that happens. Contribute today: http://www.democrats.org/FelonFreed Thank you for fighting back, Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
Up, Up and Away! July 3, 2007March 8, 2017 HAPN – DON’T SELL YOUR WARRANTS These are the warrants to buy HAPN at $5 – if an acquisition it is finalizing ultimately does get completed. With the stock (HAPN) at $5.75 or so and the warrants (HAPNW) at 30 cents or so, this might seem to be like shooting fish in a barrel. As discussed last month, nothing is that simple. But for money you can truly afford to lose, I continue to think it’s an intriguing speculation. The deadline for completion of the acquisition has been extended to August 31 (and could be extended again by mutual agreement). The hard deadline for completing it is next April. So – as if for exit visas in Casablanca – we wait. And wait. And wait. SiCKO! Carl: ‘I saw it yesterday. It was like a punch in the gut. I’ve known most of the basic facts about the dysfunctional US healthcare system for quite a while, but to see these backed up by real life examples on film was devastating. I’m ashamed to be an American after viewing this film, because ultimately, it was more about values than medical care. If we can’t fix this, I have very little hope that we have the character to accomplish much else.’ Anna Haynes: ‘Saw it Friday night. Want Canada to invade us. They will be greeted as liberators.’ Denise Szczucki: ‘I am a doctor in NYC. I saw SiCKO this weekend. While the AMA may choose to burn my membership card for saying this, I now see how ‘socialized medicine’ (really public health care) could benefit the large majority of people, including most physicians. Which finger would I chose to reattach [given that under today’s system I might have to choose one or the other]? I would sacrifice my middle finger; ideally, flinging it at the people who made me choose. Thank you for highlighting this film.’ Jim Hannah: ‘This article in slate.com has the most thoughtful analysis of the film.’ SO, WITH ALTERNATIVE ENERGY WE MIGHT NOT BURN UP AFTER ALL Dan H.: ‘Stewart Dean expresses his concern that the discovery of abundant renewable energy could result in overheating the planet. I would like to reassure him by way of referral to the laws of thermodynamics. For a source of renewable energy to exist that would increase the retained heat of the planet, the first law of thermodynamics would have to be violated. Solar radiation converted to electricity can provide no more net heat than it would if it simply radiated to the ground. Nor can wind turning a turbine generate electricity which will eventually be converted to heat than would occur simply by the friction of the wind blowing across the earth’s surface. Fortunately to the best of scientific knowledge the laws of thermodynamics are inviolable, so we can rest assured that even if the whole earth was powered by hydroelectric dams, there would be no net gain in energy and consequently no net gain in heat. When water falls from the top of a water fall, some part of the kinetic energy released during the fall is converted to heat when the water hits the bottom. The net heat gain from the electrical conversion cannot be greater than if the water simply fell to the bottom without interruption. And at the top of it all, sits the sun, radiating the energy in all of these renewable systems. We could, of course, have localized planetary heating if we take our ‘stored solar energy’ out of the ground such as with oil, gas, coal, or nuclear energy and convert if to electricity and eventual heat. But the immediate heat from the sun can be harnessed to do useful work for us with subsequent conversion to heat, or it can simply fall on the earth and heat it directly.’ TOMORROW We had a DNC fundraiser a couple of weeks ago and I got choked up as the chimes were sounded to begin moving us from cocktails to dinner. (These were sound-system chimes, not tuxedos walking around; we are always looking to save money.) The chimes themselves had no emotional significance, but they were followed – loud, stirring, and conversation-stopping – by The Fifth Dimension’s rendition of The Declaration Of Independence. You are probably too young even to know The Fifth Dimension, and it may be hard to imagine singing ‘We hold these truths . . . to be self-evident . . .’ (not to mention all the grievances), but these words are such a touchstone of our lives – ‘that ALL men . . . are created EQUAL . . .’ . . . well, it is cut 4 on disk 2 of Up-Up and Away: The Definitive Collection, and it touches a nerve. And brings me back to the Sixties and to college and – well, I hadn’t had a lot of sleep, OK? Seating charts and all that. So I got a little choked up, OK? Why are you making such a big deal out of it? This country – as it has been and, we hope, will be again – is something to GET a little choked up over. Happy July 4th.