It does?

Well, if it did, you would expect it would be easy to find statistics to back this up. The US would show up at the top or near the top for all major health care statistics. Strangely enough, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Here is what the CIA world factbook says about a few health care statistics.

Death rate: 8.38 deaths/1,000 population comparison with the rest of the world: world average: 8.2. So more people die in the US than the global average. For comparison, Canada is 7.74. About 10% better. Cuba is better. Bolivia is better. Tajikistan is better. India, Peru and Vietnam are better. South Korea is better.

Infant mortality rate: total: 6.26 deaths/1,000 live births. For comparison, Canada is 5.04.

Life expectancy at birth: total population: 78.11 years. For comparison, Canada is 81.23. 3 years better. To give some perspective. Canada is the 8th best country for longevity in the world. The US is 50th. South Korea is better.

So, by what measure is the American Health Care system the best in the world?

I accepted a trackback from another wordpress blog. It didn’t seem to say a whole hell of a lot, just quoted my blog entry. It seemed harmless enough.

A week or two later I got a complaint from a friend that I had pornography linked from my blog. I went back, and sure enough, it was true. It surely hadn’t been that way when I approved it. They must have switched it afterwards. Boy was I surprised. And the link was gone a few seconds later.

I guess the lesson is, it pays to be suspicious. If you can’t see any value added by or purpose to a comment, maybe the “value” will be added later.

Robert McNamara, the architect of the US escalation in Vietnam, circa August 1964, is dead and the real tragedy is that the leaders at the Pentagon have learned absolutely nothing since then. Iraq. Another costly war, particularly in terms of the lives of brave servicemen and women, for nothing.

From the Huffington Post: Alec Baldwin: On Al Franken, Robert McNamara, and Running Against Joe Lieberman.

A trillion dollars. Not chump change, not by a long shot.

It’s about $3300 for every man, woman and child in the US. Let’s say that half of them are working (probably that’s too high a figure, there are lots of children, some seniors, some unemployed, but let’s just assume for the minute). That’s $6600 for every wage-earner in the country.

Let’s say everyone could afford to pay an extra $1000 a year in taxes. It would take 6.6 years to pay that off.

Do you know anyone who can afford an extra grand in taxes a year? Not hardly.

So let’s say it can be paid off at the rate of $500/year/wage-earner. Not likely, but let’s just say. Then it’s 13.2 years.

Think the average person can afford $333/year? Maybe. That’s 20 years. An entire generation.

Then there’s the human cost. Over 4500 American and allied servicemen & women dead. And estimates of 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties. Again, for what?

One of the most wonderful memories I have of David is from first day of training. We had created a training center where all the actors trained in the martial arts for three solid months, 9-to-5, five days a week. And there he was with his sword, and I couldn’t help but think: I’m watching the TV show Kung Fu…only live and in person!

If you don’t know who these people are, here are some pointers.

Koko Taylor: blues singer. These clips seem to be slow to load today. I guess everyone’s doing what I’m doing.

• I’m a Woman from youtube
• Born under a Bad Sign (with Buddy Guy) also from youtube

Sam Butera: Sax player. See this interesting article They still go in threes « AM, Then FM.

David Carradine: by far the best known of the three, you won’t have any trouble googling him. I also wrote another article about him before I had heard about Koko and Sam.

Near the end of the first season, Caine is asked if he has all the answers. He says: I seek not to know the answers, but to understand the questions.

In many ways, this is my goal with this blog. I don’t think I have all the “right” answers. I may not have any right answers at all. Many times, I’m not sure there is a single “right”answer.

More importantly, we as a society often seem to find the “right” answer to the wrong question. This feels suspiciously like a solution running around in search of a problem, something I was taught in undergraduate school to be wary and distrustful of. So I think we have to get the right question first.

My personal life journey includes trying to come to terms with having lost 2 of my grandparents to genocide. Some have worried that I spent too much time dwelling in the past. Myself included, some days. I used to take solace from the quote “He who ignores the past is doomed to repeat it“. But I recently watched the episode where this sequence occurs

Caine: Is it good to seek the past, Master Po? Does it not rob the present?
Master Po: If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past.

So a balance is needed. Don’t dwell in the past, but don’t ignore it either. Easy to say. Not so easy to find the balance in practice.

So long, Grasshopper!

I write a blog on the metal stamping industry called Stamping Out A Living. In 2006, the local transit authority had a problem with fake tokens. I made what I thought was a fairly obvious comment on the blog referring to that case and a similar case in 2004. I said it wouldn’t be hard to make fake transit tokens, because the bus drivers never really look at them. The drivers don’t have time to inspect coins, the coins don’t go through any sort of automatic machinery, and every fledgling tool and die maker knows enough to make a rough coin. As a result of my “expertise” (huh?), I was interviewed on television and made it onto the evening news (I’m told – I didn’t try to watch myself).

3 years later, that article is still one of the most searched in my blog. In both April and May, that article was in the top 20. In previous months, not so much. I guess, in spring, idle minds turn to skullduggery.

Another thing my blog stats told me this month. My name is popular. Google thinks that, if you plug in Michael Wagner in the search engines, my blog “about” page comes in 6th. I don’t know in what alternate universe this is true, but it doesn’t seem to happen when I try it on the global google website. If I go to Google Canada, it does seem to be true.

But it brings up a few interesting points. About 10 years ago, when the internet was quite new, another Michael Wagner noticed that there were a lot of us, and tried to create a directory of us all, so we could find each other. I guess the point was to redirect misdirected mail (not such a far-fetched idea, as it turns out. I get a few emails a year intended for other Michael Wagners that I know). There are now so many that the directory has been abandonned. But why is Michael Wagner such a popular name?

Last week a friend from university days sent me this amusing name popularity tracker. The data source is baby naming data in the US. I have no idea how accurate it is, but even if it’s only close, it does show some amazing things. Stick Michael in there for a first name, and see how popular the name was in the post-war era. It takes a moment to load, it’s got a large Java program to run. You need to hit return after Michael to keep out other names that start with Michael (like Michaela). If I understand what the chart is telling me, Michael wasn’t a very popular name (ranking 50th or so) until the end of the second world war, but then became very popular, peaking in the ’60s when it was a very popular boys name.

My final question for the day.  If my name comes up so quickly in Google Canada, why couldn’t my high school buddies find me for the 50th reunion 3 years ago?

Then we had the First Family. And that was OK, I guess. No official position, no staff, no office, so it’s not really the same. But you can stretch the point that far, I guess.

Then we had the First Dog!
Already, you feel uncomfortable capitalizing and italicizing the First Dog. The dog got more press than most of Obama’s secretarial appointments. His own page on the White House website. I mean, come on! It must be a slow news day. Didn’t I read somewhere that they have, like, an economic problem and a couple ‘o wars?

Is there an Office of the First Dog? Is it well-staffed? Besides the First Dog Walker, that is?

Tonight CNN outdid themselves. They talked about the First Grandmother! This was news to me, but, it seems, they’ve been using this term in the states for months now. What’s next? The First Cat? First Gardener? First Violin? Did I drop into Alice in Wonderland when I wasn’t looking?

Will we have a Second Dog? Or with that be the Understudy Dog? Backup Dog? Dog Double?After all, Sadam Houssein had a double. Why not Bo?

And why “First” anyways? Can’t they just say “the President’s Dog”, cat, grandmother, gardiner, etc?