Alien Probe

An Apple a Day…

Henrik — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:23:22 +0000

We all know the old saying. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. As I brought an apple to work today i thought about that and the possibility to convert this into truly bipartisan health reform. We would get health care for all with support from the fruit farmers. On top of taht it would be cheap. Even if we paid $1.00 per apple, it would still only cost $365.00 per person per annum. Much cheaper than what we have right now. How could that go wrong?

Of course I had to figure out how many apples we need first of all. The latest CIA factbook figure lists the population of the USA as 307,212,123 as of July last year. I’m going to work with 310,000,000 to make it easy. 2 significant digits is good enough for me. Multiply that with 365 and we find that we need around 11o billion apples a year to keep the doctor away from from Americans. I’m sure that all the doctors and their families don’t really want to do that, so I’ll have to do some subtraction. Accorting to Bureau of Labor Statistics there were about 660,000 doctors in 2008. That includes dentists and medical doctors, but no other health care professionals. With the census number of average family size of 2.59 people the size of the group of non-doctor-repelling people would be approximately 1.7 million people. After recalculating I still end up with 110 billion apples. As far as the need for apples go, doctors are insignificant.

Next question is of course, how many apples are produced in the US annually? According to the US Apple Association the average in the early 2000s was about 230 million 42 lb units (in case you wonder that is equivalent of a bushel). This figure is confirmed by USDA figures. Yahoo! answers says that you get about 3 apples to a pound, which would mean that the total US apple production would be approximately 29 billion apples annually. That means that to be able to keep each American with an apple a day we would have to quadruple apple production, or we could import the rest. The funny thing is that, at the moment, the US exports about 2.5 times as many apples as it imports. There is no way every American could get an apple a day. Probably more like an apple every 3 to 4 days. And that would not keep the doctor away.

I was hoping that I had landed on the panacea of bipartisan healt care reform, but it turns out, once again, that we don’t have the resources to keep people healthy. I guess I’ll go back to arguing for a single payer system.

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Comment on the Mount Vernon Statement

Henrik — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:44:41 +0000

I was looking for some information on George Washington the other day, because I wanted to collect something about him for his birthday. During my research I stumbled across the very recent Mount Vernon statement. I had a look at it, and although I generally don’t see eye to eye with the right wing of the Republican Party, I thought it was interesting that the point they put forward are things I can support. Just look at how I read their bullet points:

It applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal.: I agree. We should limit the government based on law. We should never allow the government or its agencies to commit crimes like whole sale wire tapping, torture and illegal support to corrupt regimes abroad.
It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.: Individual liberty is essential. We should all be free to make decisions that are about our life, bar some protection to avoid infringements on other people’s rights and their property. For example, if it doesn’t harm you or your property I should be allowed to marry somebody of the same sex, or decide whether I want to take a pregnancy to terms or have a doctor help me to end my life if I feel that is the best thing. To be allowed to do what I want with my life as long as it doesn’t infringe on somebody else’s right to live their life.
It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.: I think that far to much of our corporate world are getting welfare. I look at farmers producing super crops with subsidies only to have their crops unfairly undercut another farmer. Banks that are allowed to continue to exist, although they have neither the means nor the knowledge to stay competitive on their own. Fighter planes being produced because members of congress have some of the manufacturing in their state, not because the plane is needed. I can go on, but I think you get my drift when it comes to corporate welfare.
We also have the support for the individual entrepreneur. Free health care and education to make sure that he or she can focus on doing what he or she is good at, without having to worry how to get enough money to buy health insurance for the family and save for college for their kids.
It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.: Most tyranny is based on keeping people suppressed and uneducated. Make sure that you help support education and transparency. Call out corrupt governments and fine the corporations that support them.
It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.: Allow me to choose how I define my family, neighborhood and community, and allow me to have whatever faith I want. Or none at all if that is what I want.

As you can see there are more than one way to skin a cat, although my cat would disagree. She thinks there is no way to skin a cat. The two points I’m trying to make are, firstly, that if you are unspecific of what you mean it’s easy to read into it what you want, and, secondly, that if we could take off our red/blue polarizing glasses I believe that there are a lot of things we could do. Together. For a better and more vital United States of America. But it’s going to take a lot of listening and thinking.

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Pardon, what was that again?

Henrik — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:43:27 +0000

I know. I have said elsewhere that I’m tired of Sarah Palin. And I am. However, that does not stop me from being fascinated with the fascination for Sarah. Now with her book tour in full swing, and the facebooker¹ herself reportedly being in my state for Thanksgiving I couldn’t help being absolutely stunned by her recent Bill O’Reilly interview. Thanks to TheYoungTurks for bringing it to my attention.

Here is my transcription of one question from O’Reilly and Palin’s answer:

Bill O’Reilly: Let me be very bold and fresh again. Do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?

Sarah Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense and I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values, and I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the um, the, kind of a spineless, a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite ivy league education and a fat resume that is based on anything but hard work and private sector free enterprise principles. Americans are… could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I’m not saying that it has to be me.

If that made sense to you, you are smarter than you look. Don’t you just hate that bold and fresh gotcha journalism that Bill O’ Reilly uses. If you don’t believe me and want to see it for yourself? Here is the episode from TheYoungTurks:

Priceless!

¹ I cannot really call her a blogger, since she doesn’t blog. I guess I could call her author, but that would imply that she had written at least one book. I’m not even sure she writes her facebook postings herself.

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Please, say it ain’t so!

Henrik — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:23:19 +0000

The rumors are already flying. Tim Geithner might not be Treasury Secretary much longer. But who are they floating as a replacement? JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Huffington Post has an article where they discuss whether it would be a good fit or not. My reaction? I pray that they will not be that stupid.

I know that a Treasury Secretary needs to know a lot about finance, economics and what goes on on Wall Street. But really. Replacing one Wall Street insider with another just makes it a revolving door of people mentally connected from most people in the USA, and makes lobbying from Wall Street look like an amateur’s game.

If Timothy Geithner steps down, which might not be such a bad thing, I would hope that they could find somebody that has more knowledge of small businesses, entrepreneurship and general daily grind activities. Somebody who undersands that keeping banks too big to fail will just set us up for another crash just like the one we’re in with bigger job losses and the potential for a real depression. No, we need to make the price to be big so high that it’s not financially responsible to share holders to be so big. And separate money lending banks from investment houses. The latter should not even be allowed to be called banks, just to limit the confusion.

The USA needs a good and steady hand at the helm of the Treasury. I don’t believe the Wall Street CEOs even know what the chart looks like.

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Senate Voting Saturday night

Henrik — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:14:33 +0000

On Saturday night I was watching the vote to proceed to debate on the Health Care Reform in the Senate, or Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to H.R. 3590 as it’s officially called. Is that a proof that I need to get Life 2.0? I don’t know. However, I was stunned by the lack of drama. The clerk called roll and everybody said yea or nay as predicted strictly along the caucus lines. The only exception is Sen. Geaorge Voinovich, who chose not to vote, but that took me some time to figure out. After a brief pause the clerk then read out the names of the people for and the people against, and then the presiding senator, Chris Dodd, asked if anybody wanted to change their vote, and then that was it.

Compared that to the house vote. There you heard a buzz on the floor, and applause as the 218 threshold was passed. In the Senate. Nothing. No wonder that C-Span is the only channel that broadcasts these kind of things live. The normal cable 24-hour news cycle people just don’t have time for these kind of drawn out, quiet affairs. I’m so glad there is a C-Span (or three).

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