iphthime

Malpractice reform; the Dutch health system

2009-11-14T16:49:51Z

Darshak Sanghavi on How to reform the broken medical malpractice system. The point is not that malpractice doesn't happen, but that right now the tort system works like a tournament, producing a small number of very large awards (that may not go to the people who experienced actual malpractice) yet "rarely holds providers accountable for substandard care".

Dutch health minister Ab Klink on the Dutch health system. The Dutch used to have price controls, but removed them last year on one third of medical services, including hip replacements and diabetes care; encouragingly, "All the prices that we have liberated have on average gone down or stayed the same."

"The Canterville Ghost," by Oscar Wilde

2009-10-24T16:05:07Z

I saw at least two versions of "The Canterville Ghost" on television while I was growing up, but never found out that they had been based on a story by Oscar Wilde until recently. (In those benighted days before the IMDB, if you missed the credits, you missed them and that was that.)

Anyway, it's my favorite kind of ghost story. Oscar Wilde rarely disappoints. It's free -- go read it.

Ebert's review of Ian McKellen's "Richard III"

2009-09-28T00:52:29Z

Roger Ebert's website has recently put up his 1996 review of Ian McKellen's "Richard III". (Why it was missing until now, I have no idea.)

If you haven't seen the movie already, I highly recommend it. It's one of the best filmed Shakespeare productions I've seen.

The NASA Budget, 1958 to the present

2009-07-19T18:40:41Z

Tom Wolfe's op-ed piece today addressed some of the reasons for the rise and fall during the Apollo era. As you can see from the graph, when he says that "NASA’s annual budget sank like a stone from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3 billion in the mid-1970s," that's referring to non-inflation-adjusted dollars. Inflation was pretty high during the 1970s, so the change as measured in 1996 dollars (or any inflation-adjusted measure) was even more severe.

I wouldn't mind seeing a chart that would also track the change in NASA's percentage of the federal budget over time. Wikipedia states that currently, "NASA's current FY 2008 budget of $17.318 billion represents about 0.6% of the $2.9 trillion United States federal budget," and states that the percentage peaked at 4% during Apollo, but doesn't have the year-by-year figures.

Of course, we should also put that in context of other federal R&D spending. NASA is "35% of total spending on academic scientific research in the United States, and 269% of the National Science Foundation budget". I'm thinking that the other 55% (not NASA or NSF) is going to the NIH or someplace -- the source Wikipedia cites leads to this NSF page, which says that HHS (of which NIH is a part) is "the largest provider of federal R&D funding to universities and colleges," but that doesn't account for funding that does not go through universities and colleges.

In honor of Apollo 11's anniversary: "Carrying the Fire" by Michael Collins

2009-07-16T02:13:45Z

"Carrying the Fire" deserves its reputation as one of the very best astronaut books. Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot, sticks closely to his own personal experiences, so you won't be reading about the Mercury program, or about what it was like to walk on the moon. However, it's a great depiction of what it was really like to train as an astronaut during the Gemini and Apollo eras, and of course to travel in space. Collins' lack of interest in his geology training was a minor disappointment for me since I like geology, but I knew this was the attitude of the great majority of the Apollo astronauts. Besides, who ended up needing geology less than the CM pilot? Bonus: Collins actually wrote the book himself, unlike many celebrity memoirists.

Garmin Friction (Beanbag) Mount

2009-07-14T02:11:37Z

The beanbag mount is excellent. As the Amazon reviewers say, it doesn't slide around on the dashboard at all. Now I wish I'd picked this up when I first got the GPS, instead of waiting for the crummy suction cup it came with to fall off the windshield 100 times and finally completely break. I guess I had a mental block against replacing a "perfectly good" item, even when it clearly wasn't working very well!

Kontos Kulcha Naan

2009-07-13T03:39:29Z

This is by far the tastiest store-bought naan I have tried. Key to its appeal is heating it up in the toaster oven (or regular oven, I guess) just before eating -- otherwise pretty much any store-bought naan will taste sort of stale. A couple of minutes at 400 F will do it.

The kulcha naan has a faint pleasant spicy flavor that Kontos' "tandoori" and other naans lack, but not the same overwhelming spiciness as their "masala naan". It's not available in the local Safeway (although other Kontos naans are) so I make a special trip to the local Indian market to pick it up.

Gretchen Rubin on Happiness at Work

2009-06-13T16:58:35Z

From Gretchen Rubin's "Happiness Project": 16 Tips for Feeling Happier at Work
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/happinessproject/archive/2009/06/03/sixteen-tips-for-feeling-happier-at-work.aspx

Here's a quick summary of the tips (the linked article has a lot more detail on each):

1. Check for eyestrain

2, 3. Get a good desk chair and sit up straight

4. Splurge a little on your workspace

5. Get a phone headset

6. Don't keep treats around

7. Deep clean loose papers occasionally

8. Never say yes on the phone ("I'll get back to you")

9. Take care of difficult calls as soon as possible

10. Imagine that each responsibility you accept has to be done next week

11. Be honest about how you're spending your time

12. Go outside at least once a day

13. Take a 10-minute break each hour

14. Don't let yourself get too hungry

15. Make a lunch date with someone outside the office once a week

16. Let yourself stay ignorant of things you don’t need to know.

Obvious Local News Item

2009-04-21T03:34:45Z

So the local news just now reported that kids who spend all their time playing video games do less of their homework. Who spent money on that study???

Things I Wish Were Not True: Small Car Hazards

2009-04-21T03:19:38Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/automobiles/14crash.html?hp

Don't worry, be happy

2009-03-11T03:51:13Z

For my friends back home in the South Bay:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-happiest-states-of-america/

"If you’re interested in how happy and healthy people are in your area, go to the State and Congressional Resource for Well-Being home page. There, you can find well-being index numbers broken down by Congressional district level. You’ll discover, for example, that California’s 14th district, located between San Francisco to San Jose, has the highest well-being index level. That district, considered the birthplace of Silicon Valley, also happens to have the second highest median family income of all 435 districts — and the first highest median male income of any district in the country."

How to find the pilot light on a gas oven

2009-03-09T22:29:44Z

I didn't grow up with gas ovens, so this website saved my bacon when my pilot light went out in the middle of baking the other day. Apparently it's one of those "constant pilot" systems:

http://www.appliance411.com/faq/gas_range_ignition_systems.shtml

Two posts on the place of liberal education in our society

2009-03-09T19:16:22Z

College "liberal" education vs. skills-based training

Letters on "Should a College Degree be Essential?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/l02educ.html?pagewanted=all

Stanley Fish on "The Last Professor"
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/the-last-professor/?em

From the latter:

'John Sperling, founder of the group that gave us Phoenix University, is refreshingly blunt: “Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop value systems or go in for that ‘expand their minds’” nonsense...

'Sperling understands the difficulty of achieving accreditation for his institution as a proxy “for cultural battles between defenders of 800 years of educational (and largely religious) traditions, and innovation that was based on the ideas of the marketplace – transparency, efficiency, productivity and accountability.”

Those ideas have now triumphed (Carnegie and Crane are victorious), and this means, Donoghue concludes, “that all fields deemed impractical, such as philosophy, art history, and literature, will henceforth face a constant danger of being deemed unnecessary.” '

Financial advice from the NYTimes

2009-03-09T18:03:32Z

From December: Is it Time to Buy a House?
(But see also the Amsterdam house study.)

From October:
A long term view of stocks as a retirement investment.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/10/19/weekinreview/20081019_FAIRFIELD_GRFK.html

From February:
Once again, why index funds are your friend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/your-money/stocks-and-bonds/22stra.html?em

Useful Stuff to Keep in your Kitchen and Pantry

2009-03-09T17:30:26Z

Pantry items:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/dining/07mini.html?8dpc=&_r=1&pagewanted=all

Cooking tools
http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/holidays-christmas/15-really-useful-kitchen-items-for-your-favorite-cooks-ungift-guide-2008-072041

Citation Management: LaTeX and BibTeX (and BibDesk)

2009-03-09T17:23:13Z

http://badgrads.berkeley.edu/doku.php?id=latex_and_bibtex

Voting Machines vs. Slot Machines

2009-03-09T16:32:40Z

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/03/16/GR2006031600213.gif

The Open-Source Paleontologist: How to Review a Paper

2009-03-09T16:04:55Z

Nuts and Bolts of Peer Review

Also,
http://openpaleo.blogspot.com/2008/03/r-for-paleontologists.html

Floola = iPod + Mac OS Panther

2009-03-03T03:24:49Z

So my new iPod won't work with any version of iTunes that will run under Mac 10.3 "Panther", which is what's on my home computer. I could upgrade the computer, but I have a nice stable system now and no motivation to mess it up.

It turns out that Floola could do what I wanted, and it's free:

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2009/02/04/floola_syncs_music_google_calendars_to_ipods_without_itunes-2.html

I should mention that so far it's not my primary music/video manager, since I do have OSX 10.4 on my work computer. I have plenty of items I don't particularly want to be downloading on my work computer, though (TV shows -- too much bandwidth, NSFW music tracks, etc.) so Floola is so far working very well as an auxiliary ipod manager.

Easy fruit cake/pie

2009-03-03T01:31:15Z

Via thekitchn.com:

http://cooking-books.blogspot.com/2009/02/nantucket-cranberry-pie.html

Apparently it works just as well with blueberries and cherries.

Chopsticks 201

2009-03-03T01:23:52Z

Courtesy of Just Hungry:

http://www.justhungry.com/your-guide-better-chopstick-etiquette-mostly-japanese

Free downloads of the score to "The Magic Flute"

2009-03-03T01:16:32Z

The Magic Flute Project
http://www.dogstar.dantimax.dk/magflute/mfmain.htm

To Macbook or not to Macbook?

2009-02-19T05:25:00Z

I'm pondering whether to buy a Macbook White.

On the plus side:

- It's a great deal for a Mac laptop
- It has firewire (it BUGS me that the 13" Al Macbooks don't. My firewire backup drives also have USB, but I doubt the performance will be as good.)
- Better screen resolution than my Powerbook
- Way more capable in many other ways than my powerbook, in fact

On the minus side:

- It is 0.5 lbs heavier than the G4 Powerbook I have now. I don't lug it around every day, but when I do take my laptop on the plane the 4.5 pounds is a noticeable weight in my backpack. Adding weight to my laptop seems like a backwards step.
-- I guess I could use the new Macbook for everyday and take the old one on trips. But would I actually do that?

Hmm.

Ithaca groundnut soup

2009-02-11T02:46:05Z

House of Zeus
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/zeus/groundnut.html

Moosewood
http://flickr.com/photos/ruthieki/54975494/

p.s. I made it without bell peppers and lime juice and it's still tasty.

Essays on Geology, History, and People

2009-02-11T02:38:00Z

I stumbled on this site when I was googling for something like "meteoritic iron tools". If you enjoyed "Guns, Germs and Steel" you might like these:

http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/index.html

I was particularly interested in the relationship between the timing of various metalwork developments in the Mediterranean vs. the Far East. There was some technology transfer, but not a whole lot, so they developed in different directions (casting vs. forging) for a very long time.

Also, the part about Tutankhamun's iron dagger being more valuable than his gold one.