Author Archives: Hue White

These were found at a scenic overlook stop. Some nice contrasts here.

And then the tragedy of the tree.

University of Florida professor Brandon McFadden and Oklahoma State University professor Jayson Lusk conduct and publish research on GMOs and the public. From the introduction:

The seemingly high level of public opposition is puzzling given the views of most scientists on the issue. It could be argued that gaps between science and the public has always existed (4) and is increasing (5). However, the gap is extraordinarily large regarding the safety of GM foods. Only 37% of US consumers believe GM food is safe to eat; by sharp contrast, 88% of scientist members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) believe GM food is safe to eat (6).

Deeper in:

Public concern about the safety of GM food is often expressed by demands for mandatory labeling, however, the public may prefer to default to experts for decisions related to biotechnology if they are uncertain or believe themselves unknowledgeable. Respondents were asked several questions to determine preferences for labeling (see Fig.4). While 84% of respondents supported mandatory labeling for food containing GM ingredients (fig. 4A), there was also overwhelming support for mandatory labeling food containing deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (fig. 4D). Eighty-percent of consumers supported a label for food indicating the presence or absence of DNA, an absurd policy that would apply to the vast majority of foods in a grocery store.

Rather than asking whether consumers want mandatory labeling, a more instructive question might be how they believe such an issue should be decided. A question similar to that posed by (21) was applied to the case of labeling, and results indicate only 35% thought decisions about mandatory labeling should mainly be based on the views of average Americans, with the remainder believing the issue should be decided by experts (fig. 4B). Furthermore, only 8% thought the issue of mandatory labeling should be decided by ballot initiative, and the majority, 58%, thought the issue should be decided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (fig. 4C). Therefore, although most consumers support a mandatory label for GM food, most consumers also thought the decision should be made experts with more knowledge. Indeed, as previous results suggest, consumers had little knowledge of basic genetics.

I’ve omitted the references and figures. The ignorance concerning the prevalence of DNA in the food supply is unsurprising and not particularly grievous; it’s a big world out there and I know very bright software engineers who aren’t really aware of the contents of the solar system.

As the authors themselves note, the more interesting question concerns who should be making decisions, and quite clearly the respondents felt that the experts in the field should be in charge of making such decisions. This is quite reasonable, even reassuring on its face, although I think there will be, depending on the field, legitimate questions concerning who’s an expert and who’s not.

I think there is a delicate incongruity in this particular example in that deciding whether or not mandatory labeling is appropriate should be one for the experts, but if the answer is ‘yes’, then the vast majority of the responsibility for understanding the issues of GMOs shifts right back to the consumers. It leads back to the question of democracy and science, as we discussed in a political context here. It’s a kinky problem – there’s a shared responsibility for what we eat, between ourselves and the suppliers. But will mandatory labeling help when most consumers do not realize DNA is deeply intertwined with our food supply? Is more education the panacea, or are most consumers just too busy making a living to really have the time to care about this sort of thing? And after all that study, what if they choose to believe the GMO analog of Jenny McCarthy, the anti-vaxxer queen who does terrible damage to the efforts to extirpate many diseases from the world? It’s a head-scratcher.

(h/t NewScientist’s delicious Feedback column, 18 June 2016, paywall)

Sometimes your spouse says just the right thing.

Today, it was, “The GOP has become the National Enquirer of politics.” Then she paused. “I take that back. They’re worse. They’re the Weekly World News.”

Ironically, WWN’s tag is:

 THE WORLD’S ONLY RELIABLE NEWS

A winsome plant.

As if I knew what “winsome” meant.

Steve Benen @ Maddowblog reports on the latest remarks of former Governor and former candidate for Vice President Sarah Palin regarding the Republicans Against Trump movement:

“That gang, they call themselves Never hashtag, whatever, I just call ‘em Republicans Against Trump, or RAT for short,” the former governor of Alaska told attendees of the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, ahead of Trump’s address. […]

“[T]he ‘splodey heads keep ‘sploding over this movement because it seems so obvious,” she said. “[Colorado Republican Senate candidate] Darryl [Glenn] wins, Trump wins, America will win because voters are so sick and tired of being betrayed.”

She added, in reference to Trump’s GOP critics, “At such a time as this, you cannot be lukewarm. We’re going to take our country back, and you are either with us or against us.”

So she’s thinking voters will vote against those who betray them. Fair enough. Here’s a few statements from her own allies, a year ago, courtesy Right Wing Watch (and via Steve Benen):

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, for example, said there would be an anti-gay “revolution” that would “just break this nation apart” if marriage bans were overturned, warning that such a ruling would “literally split this nation in two and create such political and cultural turmoil that I’m not sure we could recover from it.” …

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson warned that the U.S. could witness a second civil war over a same-sex marriage decision and televangelist Rick Joynerpredicted that the court would “start an unraveling where our country fractures like it hasn’t since the Civil War.” …

“It is just a question of how soon the wrath of God is going to come on this land,”televangelist Pat Robertson warned. Florida-based pastor Carl Gallups, now a staunch Donald Trump ally, maintained that “this ruling may prove to be the final death knell of divine judgment upon our once great nation.” …

[Former House Speaker Tom] DeLay warned that the ruling would pave the way for a secret government plan to legalize “12 new perversions, things like bestiality, polygamy [and] having sex with little boys.” Ben Carson, then a GOP candidate for president, suggested that NAMBLA would benefit from the ruling. …

Mike Huckabee said that America was witnessing “the criminalization of Christianity” and that any pastor who didn’t want to officiate a wedding for a same-sex couple would be liable to face criminal charges :

If the courts rule that people have a civil right not only to be a homosexual but a civil right to have a homosexual marriage, then a homosexual couple coming to a pastor who believes in biblical marriage who says ‘I can’t perform that wedding’ will now be breaking the law. It’s not just saying, ‘I’m sorry you have a preference.’ No, you will be breaking the law subject to civil for sure and possible criminal penalties for violating the law…. If you do practice biblical convictions and you carry them out and you do what you’ve been led by the spirit of God to do, your behavior will be criminal.

That last one is clearly a deliberate attempt to confuse theological marriage with civil marriage, which can then be used to push the damaging Christian nation meme. However, the real point I’m making is that the right-fringe leadership persistently uses hysterical predictions to frighten their followers into obedience. But as Palin inadvertently clarifies, voters and followers do pay attention, even if it’s at the prompting of, let us say, competing leaders.

So, as the realization hits that Palin, Dobson, et al, are merely lying every time they want something, what will these “betrayed” voters do? Will they head even further right, perhaps into the waiting arms of the KKK and White Supremacist groups? Or will that prove too repugnant? Given the dominance of Fox News and further right radio channels, it’s a little hard seeing them returning to the neighborhood of reasonable conservatives, such as the GOP of 30 years ago – which doesn’t exist in organized form anyways? The prejudices and false information that informs their thought processes are firmly in place; interesting historical information that dismantle their mythos won’t penetrate (such as this fascinating piece on the history of abortion by CNN). What can be done?

Start a service to rehabilitate regretful extreme-right conservatives?

The signs and symptoms of climate change can be seen everywhere, even at the edge of space. On Spaceweather.com, Dr. Tony Phillips writes about the phenomenon of noctilucent clouds and how their increasing brilliance may signal changes in the atmospheric composition:

They appear with regularity in summer months, shining against the starry sky at the edge of twilight. Back in the 19th century you had to go to Arctic latitudes to see them. In recent years, however, they have been sighted from backyards as far south as Colorado and Kansas.

Noctilucent clouds are such a mystery that in 2007 NASA launched a spacecraft to study them. The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere satellite (AIM) is equipped with sensors specifically designed to study the swarms of ice crystals that make up NLCs.  Researchers call these swarms “polar mesospheric clouds” (PMCs).

Source: National Weather Service

It’s a fascinating story, discovering that climate change means the mesosphere actually becomes icier, as he notes here from a 36 year long data record:

At altitudes where PMCs form, temperatures decreased by 0.5 ±0.2K per decade. At the same time, water vapor increased by 0.07±0.03 ppmv (~1%) per decade. …

These results are consistent with a simple model linking PMCs to two greenhouse gases. First, carbon dioxide promotes PMCs by making the mesosphere colder. (While increasing carbon dioxide warms the surface of the Earth, those same molecules refrigerate the upper atmosphere – a yin-yang relationship long known to climate scientists.) Second, methane promotes PMCs by adding moisture to the mesosphere, because rising methane oxidizes into water.

Speaking of CO2, how is it doing? From the Mauna Loa station:

… isn’t this odd?

… it looks like the plague as a flower.

Much nicer!

And another view of our everted lungs.

Once again we have a Vincent Price collection, but unlike the Poe-based vignettes reviewed earlier, these are based on Nathaniel Hawthorne stories and are more suspenseful. I speak of Twice Told Tales (1963), in which Price stars in the adaptations of the stories.

In “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment“, Price is the friend of a doctor and scientist, Heidegger (Sebastian Cabot), both now elderly. A storm hits and lightning strikes the mausoleum of Heidegger’s long-dead fiancee, Sylvia, from whose death he never really recovered, and the old men venture out to examine the structure for damage. They find the woman’s body extraordinarily well preserved, and Heidegger hypothesizes that a liquid coming through the roof and finding its way into her coffin is responsible. In a devil-may-care moment, he drinks the liquid and regains his youth. Pressed, Price’s character does likewise, and now they are young bulls.

Heidegger becomes hopeful, and despite Price’s bland discouragements, presses forward to administer the solution to his fiancee’s corpse, and the ultimate is achieved! Sylvia revives. But as the doctor disappears to fetch clothing, we discover the disaster waiting to happen – Price and Sylvia had been lovers, cheating on the good doctor, and, the two filled with the hormones of youth after decades of decay, indulge in lust’s sweet embrace, much to the consternation of the doctor. He returns with a knife, with which is he is incompetent and suffers the indignity of a sudden death. Meanwhile, the effects of the liquid are effervescent, and Sylvia dries up, leaving Price to scrabble after the last few drops in a tomb run dry. A simple story of how the most base of sins will have repercussions even at the end of a life, spoiling all that one may have worked for, and for all that it is of the speculative fiction genre, it is effective.

“Rappaccini’s Daughter” tells the story of a man’s obsession with keeping sin from his daughter: she becomes a poison, a danger to everyone. But one chemistry student aspires to her hand, nonetheless, and this cannot be tolerated, and so, rather than cure the girl, the man becomes poison as well – never able to cheat on her. In the end, all is lost. It is properly told: why is the bush poisonous, why is its essence administered to her, oh why why why? And so we’re hooked on the story, and the work of the actors, all the way to the end.

Unlike the first two, “House of the Seven Gables” lies in the horror genre, with supernatural forces at work, but for all that the moral questions are serious: are the relatives of a man unjustly executed for witchcraft required to help the family of those who accused that executed man find treasure? Do sins accrue over the centuries? Sadly, at least for Vincent, his family is a dusty, corrupt echo of what it once was, and he succumbs to the ghostly (and poorly done) skeletal hand around the throat, as a due answer to the questions du jour, and as the house collapses and the opposing family member escapes, we’re left to meditate upon the sins of the past and how they effect the current election, the general competency of the performances of Price’s bygone age, and how much was done with so little money.

There are more ways to tell a story than with 200 digital artists working on computers.

Merging black holes generate gravitational waves – the target of the recently successful LIGO experiment. But generating such a wave takes energy – a lot of it, as reported in NewScientist (18 June 2016):

The second signal, called GW151226, also came from a pair of black holes merging. But these were much lighter – about 14.2 and 7.5 times the mass of the sun. They merged to form a black hole of 20.8 solar masses, meaning about 1 solar mass of energy radiated away in gravitational waves during the collision.

“This event radiated the equivalent of the mass of our sun in a couple of seconds,” [Salvatore Vitale of MIT] says. “Our own sun radiated about a millionth of its mass in 5 billion years. This really gives you the scale of how violent and sudden this release of energy is, as compared to our everyday experience.”

That’s a lot of energy.

Alireza Ramezani reports that the United States has succeeded in sowing concern and anxiety in Iran, as the various intellectuals and factions attempt to predict the behaviors of Trump and Clinton with regard to Iran.  From AL Monitor:

Clinton, who claimed that she was the only adult in the presidential race when it comes to foreign policy, announced in January that her approach toward Iran would be to “distrust and verify.” She, however, welcomed full implementation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a major part of which focuses on lifting economic sanctions on Iran. Clinton described the landmark nuclear deal as an important achievement of diplomacy “backed by pressure,” referring to her effort to intensify sanctions on Iran. …

Trump has been critical of the nuclear deal, calling for an expansion of sanctions as a way to force the Islamic Republic to make more concessions, adopting “America First” and a “stay unpredictable” approach toward Iran. Yet, Raisdana believes that Trump could be more reliable as far as the nuclear deal is concerned given the GOP’s record on major foreign policy decisions. In this vein, Raisdana points out that Republican President Richard Nixon ended America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam and opened diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Trump comes from the same party as Nixon, a party that can easily change its hostile approach toward Iran if need be, Raisdana said.

Abdoh Tabrizi disagrees. He told Al-Monitor that Trump is “too risky” to deal with, whereas Clinton is more predictable. In this vein, he acknowledged that Barack Obama has been an “exception” among US presidents. “We have to take advantage of the several months of his remaining term to hammer out agreements in favor of our country and economy,” Abdoh Tabrizi emphasized, implicitly agreeing with Raisdana that Clinton would not be as favorable to Iran.

I agree with Tabrizi. It’s a signal error of analysis to equate the party of Nixon with the party of Trump. As the years passed in the post-Nixon era, the GOP has transformed from a good conservative counterweight to the Democrats to a right-wing fringe party which is willing to cannibalize even its own if they can’t deliver. Consider this report from Steve Benen @ Maddowblog:

The unhinged right starts with the ideologically satisfying answer – President Obama and Hillary Clinton are guilty of horrible Benghazi-related wrongdoing – and then works backwards, looking for “proof” that matches the conclusion. When their ostensible allies fail to tell these activists what they want to hear, they could reevaluate their bogus assumptions, but it’s vastly easier to believe Republicans have let them down.

Wait, it gets worse.

As Milbank reported, a former Ted Cruz adviser complained yesterday that Gowdy “did not draw a connection between the dots.” And why not? According to retired Gen. Thomas McInerney, the Benghazi Committee chairman “had his reasons – political” for holding back.

McInerney “speculated that congressional leadership had approved ‘black operations’ to run weapons from Benghazi to Islamic State forces in Syria.”

While such flakes existed back in the Nixon days, they were more or less told to stay in their fever swamps and fume. Now they’re the Tea Party and voters pay attention to them despite – or because of – their bizarre antics.

Back to Iran. Clearly, neither presumptive nominee is attractive:

One can perhaps argue that Clinton is more predictable than Trump, yet she has insisted that Iran “continues to threaten the peace and security of the Middle East” and that the country is “violating UN Security Council resolutions with its ballistic missile program.” These statements indicate that if her concerns are not addressed, Clinton could cause trouble for Tehran, just as she has in the past, pushing for tough sanctions.

There’s a certain grim entertainment value in considering the fact that Iran is fairly powerless in this situation – they can do very little to influence our internal politics. I think Clinton’s approach is very sensible, while Trump might back out of his vow to rip up the agreement – but, of course, it’s hard to be certain.

One of our favorites, because they’re bizarre!

… but I wonder if we can go a little further sometimes. Ryan Hagemann has published a commentary and entreaty in Lawfare on another encryption draft proposal, the Digital Security Commission Act, leading off with the observation,

The current encryption debate is gridlocked. For the past year, privacy advocates, civil libertarians, Department of Justice attorneys, cryptographers, and others have been stonewalling one another, exchanging a barrage of bumper sticker slogans. These engagements have drawn attention to an important issue, but have largely failed to illuminate the path forward.

Mr. Hagemann summarizes the Act as the creation of a commission of experts to make recommendations, etc. He ends the piece thusly:

We have but one path forward in this debate, and that’s the one that treats all the competing equities and stakeholders as equals. The intellectually honest and ideologically neutral option is to embrace politics as the art of the possible, not as a war of all against all. To do so, civil society, law enforcement, the technology industry, economists, cryptographers, and other leading experts need to sit down and reason through competing interests to arrive at a solution that protects encryption, the digital economy, and the security of all Americans.

Which strikes me as perhaps a trifle naive. It may, in fact, work – but today we don’t appear to understand that we have to come together to construct useful solutions, so I have to wonder if this call for civility and honorable conduct will really be respected.

But it struck me that a more aggressive approach might be considered. I would like to suggest that each person coming forward to assert a solution to the problem be presented with what the general consensus believes is the most pressing objection to the general class of solutions to which their solution might be considered to belong, and be required to explain how their solution adequately treats it. It’s one thing to explain the strengths of your proposal, but quite bit more interesting to explain how a proposal solves what is generally considered a weakness of that class of proposals. Those who refuse to honor such a request may be ignored as unserious about the debate.

The downside of such a proposal is that now the group has to identify solution categories and the best objection to each. Of course, the best proposals will resolve the objections by turning them into strengths, usually by incorporating the objection as an honest and serious assertion, and then use the strengths of their proposal to resolve it – and not just ridicule all opposition as we often see happen.

Courtesy my Arts Editor, I’m not sure what these might be, but they’re mighty fun!

Indeed it is. A friend directs me to a recent paleontological discovery, as described in National Geographic by Kristin Romey:

If you’re interested in the ill-fated Franklin Expedition of 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage, the Royal Ontario Museum has information on the finding of the HMS Erebus, including videos (via american archaeology, summer 2016). And Archaeology (July/August 2016) has a full article:

The search to determine the fate of Franklin’s 1845 expedition began almost immediately after the realization that the ships were lost. Since then, explorers have turned up bodies, bones, weapons, tools, a sunken rescue ship, and even a handwritten note with precise coordinates of where the quest veered so horribly off course. But the shipwrecks themselves remained elusive, lost amid a constellation of archipelagos and the whims of sea ice. After nearly 170 years, Canadian archaeologists were finally on the cusp of a breakthrough in one of the great maritime mysteries. The potential find carried the weight of decades of anticipation and even modern geopolitical ramifications, as the nations that surround the now increasingly ice-free Arctic jockey for access to the natural resources that are thought to lie beneath it.

The romance of exploration mixed with the horror of running into conditions beyond our management. Is that our future as well, exploring outer space (or the Marianas Trench) and encountering disastrous conditions combined with failing equipment?

Is that the fate of an individualist, the likes of which has only arisen in the last 50 years? Or does this fate belong more to those who feel themselves an inextricable part of the human society, such as T. E. Lawrence, whose letters (T. E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters, ed. Malcolm Brown, although I shan’t dig out the page number as it’s been many years since I read that tome) include his envy that two of his brothers died in World War I, in service to the British Empire – a find that brought me up short many years ago. I would have reacted in horror, knowing the possible final fates of those men, cut down by machine gun fire, or choking to death on any of several poison gases employed by both sides, perhaps bayoneted… But, for him, it was their honor to give their lives in the employ of the empire.

Never mind his own exploits.

Franklin, Shackleton, Lawrence – no doubt very different men, but who put their lives on the line in very chancy circumstances. Will we see those days again? Will we see those days where craters are explored by future drones – not in search of new frontiers, but in search of those who went before, and became ever-silent?

Here we have Ornamental Onions, not so tasty but cute as all get out. These have gotten out of their corner and will have to be ripped out at some point.

And back behind them are the raspberry bushes!

Here we have the return of hollyhocks to our garden. They had disappeared for several years…

On the one hand, I’m not sure if I’m pleased to share the same thought process with Elon Musk, as reported by Geraint Lewis in NewScientist (11 June 2016, paywall):

ARE we, and the universe we are in, a simulation? SpaceX chief Elon Musk thinks there is a tiny billions-to-one chance that we actually exist physically, and it is much more likely that we are data swirling around on someone’s supercomputer. What leads him to this strange conclusion?

However, given how nominative determinism keeps popping up these days, one is forced to conclude the programmer-in-chief needs to cut down on the random correlations.

Musk is immersed in a technological world that has advanced rapidly, and it seems inevitable to him that a functioning human brain, consciousness and all, will exist within a computer in the not too distant future. With the growth in computing power over the next few millennia, this first lonely brain will be joined by many more in a computed universe.

Which all sounds quite pleasant, I suppose, but I have to wonder if the limits of computation would have an impact on our capabilities once we’re encapsulated in a computer. I’ve mentioned this before, but there are days in which, wondering at how woefully awful we are at understanding our world, even with the use of science, I have to wonder if, already embedded in a computer, we’re also already operating with some inherent burdens springing from the computational model used by whoever has put us in here.

Of course, both sides of the issue should be considered: perhaps we are improved by our sojourn in the speculative computer? Better memories, perhaps, although that might lead to insanity. One is left to wonder: how to determine the edges of our computer simulation? It’s an interesting thought, at least to me.

Once I got over the wretched title of I Bury the Living (1958), my Arts Editor and I discovered an eccentric little horror thriller, a low-key movie about a man named Kraft (Richard Boone) who is elected chair of the cemetery committee. A nearly honorary post, he’s assured, but soon he discovers the cemetery map under the management of a man-of-all-work (Theodore Bikel), full of white pins (reserved but unused lots) and black pins (lots with the body already in residence).  Soon he’s replacing white pins with black pins and watching the bodies pile up.

Is he, in some occult way, responsible? The movie takes the question seriously, and as we build to the dénouement, he quite logically removes the black pins he has placed (symbolizing his supposed ‘victims’) and replaces them with white pins, in the belief that, if he can end someone’s life by placing a black pin on their plot on the map, he can restore their life by changing their pin back to white.  So at this point, we wonder if we’re about to see a legitimate predecessor to the various zombie movies & plays of today?

But no…

This is not a movie of a man moved beyond his abilities by some power, but rather a man overwhelmed by a power, within or without him, and its arbitrary requirements of him, and all he’ll do – or not – to satisfy it. Eating away at the edge of insanity, as he watches his life fall apart around him, a moral man whose very life appears to violate those very moral norms of traditional society. What is the solution? A gun? A mad urge to dig the bodies up? He becomes a rag doll to the competing demands of morality and power. In deep ways, questions of responsibility become paramount, and this movie deviously leaves those answers to the viewer.

From CNN’s report on the turmoil in the UK Labor Party:

Benn’s sacking was followed by several shadow Cabinet resignations: shadow cabinet of shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander, shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray, shadow education secretary Lucy Powell, shadow secretary for environment, food and rural affairs Kerry McCarthy and shadow chief secretary to the treasury Seema Malhotra.

I want to know the nature of “shadow health”!

When it comes to the British Exit from the EU, Timothy Edgar is not happy from the perspective of international security. On Lawfare he’s published an opinion delineating a few possible ways this could go down:

The UK’s decision to leave the European Union could be a big blow for United States national security – and for global privacy.  The UK has always served as a bridge between America and Europe.  Its decision to leave the EU makes it a less effective one.

In the wake of Brexit, the United States government is emphasizing continuity.  President Obama is stressing the special relationship, and the intelligence community is saying its partnerships with both the UK and other European nations will not be affected.  Of course, if Brexit triggers a breakup of the United Kingdom, which seems an entirely plausible outcome, the impact on transatlantic security would be quite severe.

Which leaves me wondering if the USA should interfere if Scotland and Northern Ireland decide to hold a referendum on leaving the UK.

RedState quotes Ted Cruz’s statement:

The British people have spoken clearly: They choose to leave the European Union.

The results of the ‪#‎Brexit‬ referendum should serve as a wake-up call for internationalist bureaucrats from Brussels to Washington, D.C. that some free nations still wish to preserve their national sovereignty.

The British people have indicated that they will no longer outsource their future to the EU, and prefer to chart their own path forward. The United States can learn from the referendum and attend to the issues of security, immigration and economic autonomy that drove this historic vote.

In addition, we should treat the #Brexit as an opportunity to forge a closer partnership with our historic friend and ally, including immediately starting negotiations for a targeted US-UK free trade agreement.

Which seems a brilliant misreading of history, from the small margin of victory, the appropriateness of even holding a referendum, to calling the country with whom we’ve fought two wars a historic ally – we’ve had better relations with France. RedState then continues with its own comment.

To a great extent the #Brexit vote was a metaphor for our own struggle over federalism. Just as Brussels permeated every facet of daily life in the UK, from business practices and product labeling to family law, so, too, has Washington run roughshod over the historic autonomy of states and municipalities. The anxiety and anger expressed by the voters in 2010, 2014 and during the 2016 primary campaigns is no different that the anxiety and anger expressed by the voters in Britain yesterday. #Brexit was a vote for freedom and personal autonomy and against rule by a self-anointed elite.

I suppose the Republicans in the North Carolina statehouse fit that description, for just one fine example of the self-anointed running roughshod over the wishes of the public. Then there’s gun control laws (or lack thereof), marriage equality, and a number of other such topics. And you have to love the attempt to cleave the voters from those they chose, while blandly ignoring the fact that the GOP holds Congress

But, for perspective, that entire paragraph fits into the conservative strategy of inventing anger in the conservative voter against the Federal government. After all, how are you going to increase clicks if you tell everyone that everything is fine?

National Review’s David French echoes RedState:

Across the ocean, America faces its own crisis. Our technocratic elite has constructed its own self-serving system — one that mirrors the very system that Britain rejected yesterday. Our politics are more uncertain and chaotic than at any time in decades. We can’t predict what will happen. But one thing I do know — history never truly had a “side.” Instead, it is the story of action and reaction, and no outcome is inevitable.

As if the elite isn’t subject to voters. The echo chamber of the Right is sometimes amazing. But the Left has its own odd delusions, as simply the title of this Huffington Post article suggests:

Brexit Chaos Could Shock Trump Voters Back To Common Sense.

Why?

And definitely in the short term, Trump’s ideas just got a big test overseas and they failed — here’s hoping Americans are paying attention.

If that’s not clear to me, why should it be clear the average American voter who’s not paying any attention to overseas action? Still, this is interesting.

The specter of job loss hangs ominously over the U.K., particularly for 2.2 million financial workers in the country. Before the historic vote on Thursday, employers signaled that they’d flee the country if it voted itself out of the Union. In April, John Cryan, the British-born chief executive of the German giant Deutsche Bank said he planned to move operations to Frankfurt, Germany’s financial capital.

In Iran, AL Monitor‘s Arash Karami reports some initial responses:

Deputy chief of staff of the armed forces Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri was the first Iranian official to offer a comment after the shocking June 23 vote that surprised most Western experts and analysts. “The desire by the people of England to leave the EU is in reality a ‘No’ by the majority of the people for the continuation of the compliance of the British government with respect the imposition of America’s will on this country,” Jazayeri said.

I can only think that the General, like most blogs and partisan media sources, insists on seeing everything through his own personal prism.  Arash summarizes the terrain in Iran:

There’s always fall out from SCOTUS decisions, and those good folks on the Web are always there to track them.  Here’s one for Obergefell v. Hodges.^1,2 I’m told it’ll be updated with every change by a crack team.

In case this surprises you, perhaps you should consider getting your news & views from some other source than Fox News and WorldNetDaily.

¹You are not being Rick-rolled.

²h/t Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog.

Steven Weissman publishes an article on health care pricing in a blog on Center for Health Journalism:

I am going public to reveal the astonishing truth. There is a simple way to instantly, with ease, end our nation’s health cost misery!

When the founder of a Miami area hospital, who was a longtime friend and client died, I became interim president. The insider’s view of the healthcare system is enough to make anyone sick. …

Laws requiring health providers to publish price ranges or average prices are growing in popularity. Such so called “price transparency” serves as a public relations gimmick to relieve ever mounting public pressure on elected representatives. Simply put, each of us is entitled to know the actual price we will be charged for our healthcare. Limiting disclosure to price ranges or averages, while permitting providers to predatorily bill each person a different amount, unfairly benefits providers at the expense of all patients.

While it sounds nice, it remains a truism that a person in an ambulance doesn’t have time for price shopping. Now this may be ameliorated by the very act of publishing a price list, as then consumer groups can compare and publish conclusions to the general public, and hospitals and other providers who are out of line on price may then revise their prices downward – or possibly upward.

On the other hand, the sheer volume of procedures and prices may be such that ‘price transparency’ becomes a meaningless concept, even for consumer groups. On this I’m uncertain, but Steven’s conclusion rings some warning bells for me:

When rates are set, patients will be able to shop for good healthcare value. Providers will be forced to compete based on price, quality and service. Healthcare costs will plummet. The cost of health insurance, which is simply a direct function of underlying medical costs, will plummet as well.

Perhaps it’s just the cynic in me, but I think that last sentence is naive. Health insurance must include a profit margin, based on health actuarial calculations. Nor do I really see anything here about wellness pricing, which I recall Mayo Clinic had advocated a very long time ago – possibly before the Web was invented. It never seemed to go anywhere, but as I recall the concept was to pay the provider based on the health outcome of the patient. By removing the ‘price by procedure’ practice, duplicate tests become a negative, and the provider (especially the commercial side of the operation) is focused on outcome, rather than piecework. Sounds great in abbreviated theory, but how do you compensate, say, oncologists who work on what is currently terminal cancer? Or hospice centers? I suppose outcome expectations have to be detailed, but that becomes a moving target. Perhaps that’s why this concept didn’t make it.

Down in the comments section is a suggestion of something of which I’ve had a suspicion, but not the time to investigate.

Free market competion in healthcare.

Posted by Thomas Johnson (not verified) | Wed, 2016-06-22