Journalists of the month Connolly-Murray

- Doctor, I do have health insurance, but it does not work when I am sick.

This is the first time in months that I think I learned something useful about health care in
8 Questions about health-care reform: Update
Reporting by Ceci Connolly and Shailagh Murray
Here is the link

There is a lot of work behind this paper and the authors make very clear for us what is going on.
Great Job!

Two cents on health care

As soon as people hear my foreign accent, they ask me about health care in Europe. Is it true that you can wait a whole year for an operation? Is it true that public health care is horrible?
No, it is not true.
All these rumors come from people paid by insurance companies or by extreme right people who have so much political passion that they have become anti-Americans (look at the way they applauded when we did not get the Olympic games!)
I lived 30 years in France and one year in various British Isles and many years in Belgium. The most I ever waited for an operation was about 6 weeks. And then I was treated competently. The most I paid for an operation was about 300 dollars.
Is medicine in Europe perfect? Of course not. For instance, if you are a fifty years old woman, it is hard to find a doctor who would not answer your complaints with: "it must be menopause, do not worry about it"
When I was fifty and in trouble is the only time I really wished I had an interesting prostate. But I am sure it does not happen here, in the paradise of private medicine.

9/11

It is the exact same pain I feel. Does not seem to subside with time.

Journalist of the month: Noam Cohen

No contest this month, the most interesting paper for me was written by Noam Cohen in the New York Times: about new trends in the army.
It appears that any army personnel can help re-write or contribute writing army manuals (in the same spirit as Wikipedia).
This is the most important change in the mindset of the army in the last four thousand years, so you should read this.
Somehow it gives me hope that the army, at least ours. is finally growing up. Seriously: the Army might get out of this effort manuals that everybody understands and a more modern treatment of problems.
Bravo!

For an actor, what is the worst that could happen?

I have been wrong for fifty years: I thought the worst that can happen to an actor is to go undiscovered. I was wrong.
The worst that can happen is to be a good actor playing a would-be writer in a dingy apartment in Queens after 9/11. IF
IF in the next scene, they will show 60 years old Meryl Streep in Paris at noon time, making love with enthusiasm to a bald husband.
I know how the actors Amy Adams and Chris Messina must feel: I was once sitting on a panel with the best people in my field, and I felt like an insect squeezed in the pages of a dictionary.
If you have not seen Julie and Julia yet, race to see it. It may not be the best movie you will ever see, plus it is about Julia Child and yet misses the point of French cuisine, but Meryl Streep will amaze, uplift and enchant you in one of the best performances you will ever see.
Don't miss this.

Inventions that changed my life since the 1940s

What changed our life? The answer is probably different for every person, because we have different needs. Cell phones, for instance are not on my list. I think that they are a nuisance in the US but helpful in underdeveloped countries.Here is my list.

Because they saved my life:
1. Antibiotics
2. fiber-optic technology. Among many applications, I am specially grateful for the medical ones.

Because they ameliorate social conditions
3. the pill or not the pill: freedom to organize one's life. More than that. knowledge that you can organize your own life.
4. New vegetables. New species of flowers. I still got the gardening guide of my grandmother: it is incredibly poor, compared to what is available today. I am less convinced by modified animals generally made to satisfy greed, rather than the customer.

Because I lived alone most of my life:
5. good quality paint, specially latex paint
6. the invention of home improvement stores which gave women access to DIY
7.Television (like many Europeans, we got our first TV to see the moon landing)

Because I used to be an oceanographer:
8. weather and positioning satellites: it changed everybody's lives not only life at sea
9. Numerical weather predictions: climate models save countless lives every day

Because I am curious:
10. Computers, the internet, blogging
11. Finding black holes at the center of galaxies. That gives more sense to the universe.
12. Access to time. Dating the age of the earth, of artefacts, of climate changes, etc; it is all possible through our understanding of nuclear reactions.
13. the structure of DNA: a first access to the great secrets of life

Small cons downtown: how to steal from the poor

There are small Ponzis and small cons that seldom make it in the justice system: in Savannah where I live, for instance, small crimes against poor people are committed every day. There is this nice couple trying to sell some exotic fruit juice to a small restaurant owner: it cures cancer, they tell him. I raise my head over my coffee to explain that they have no right to say that. They are defensive: it is on the list of qualities that the juice company manager has recommended to them. They show me the list in good faith: of course it has no name or address on it. I explain to them that they can be sued, not the manager, because they cannot prove the paper came from him. The fruit in question not only cures cancer, but every disease you can think of such as the flu or broken bones.

A more successful con around here is a pyramid: you pay 500 dollars for a lecture (usually about how to get rich), then you find three people who will pay you 500 dollars for the lecture, and your benefit is a thousand bucks. It has to work, right? If it does not work, it is your fault. The victims do not even know that it is an illegal scheme, so they do not complain.

The worst financial crime in Savannah is against black women, although an old white lonely woman is a likely victim too. Why black women? I guess there is in some families a cultural bias, a make-believe that the man has more authority, more competence than the woman. Any woman who believes it is prone to become a victim. Here is how the con works. Imagine a situation, very common around here, where the woman is working and the man is mainly going out and spending money, if he makes any. When comes the time to buy a house, the man says: "Let me take care of it. I know how to deal with this". The sale happens with the name of the man on the deed, no trace of the name of the woman. Later, divorce or separation occurs, and the woman discovers that she has no right to the house. Cases like this are difficult to prove. I have seen four cases without making any research, so it has to be common.