Fallenmonk

If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad; if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." - John F. Kennedy

Showing posts with label Survival. Show all posts

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Do What You Can

I've been terribly busy lately and in one way that is a good thing. I have been too busy to dwell upon on the bad news, especially about the environment. The shit storm is heading for us fast. 2011 saw green house gas emissions reach its highest point in history. Closer measurement has shown that the worlds oceans are rising twice as fast as predicted and there is more bad news after more bad news and no one seems to have any inclination to do anything about it. Wait a minute you say...what about all the Priuses and the compact fluorescent bulbs, and CFC free hairspray and deodorant and stuff. It is there and it is helping but it is nothing compared to the sheer volume of greenhouse emissions coming from the U.S. and other developed and developing countries. Spend anytime reading around and you will be overwhelmed with the bad news...well it is bad news if you are mostly conscious which appears to leave a lot of people in this country out of the picture especially the so-called leadership. Happily, most of the folks who visit here seem to be in the minority in that they actually are aware of the humongous bag of crap that we are in and thus here is the message...

CHILL! Focus on your own universe. Take care of your own heart and mind and the hearts and minds of those around you. The news coming at those of us that are even marginally attuned to the rhythms of the universe is tragic and disheartening and is a sure-fire path to psycho-emotional burnout. Each of us has limited energy and capacity. As much as our desire and compassion pulls us into the maelstrom of our planet's problems, sickness, torture, abuse, and pollution we must, at some point, pull back and resist. Even as we see the inevitable death of our earth happen before our eyes we must remind ourselves of our limits. As much as we might desire the power to affect it, the karma of the universe is not ours to rectify. Our responsibility is to our own karma and to some extent the karma of those we are closet to and love. If you spread your energy too far afield and try to embrace the anger, suffering, violence and pain of our dying planet you will self destruct and in doing so fail to address what you actually have the power to control and that is yourself.

The hard truth is that if each of us did what is right, truly right, for ourselves and our loved ones. If each of us focused on the purity of our local universe and lives, the problems of our planet would solve themselves. We would make the correct decisions for our environment even if it meant foregoing some of the niceties of modern life. We would reject consumerism for what it is...disaster. We would reject the idea of war and with it would go the vast wasted resources that go with it. We would turn and recognize our Mother Earth as our partner instead of adversary and we would grasp our small bit of the web of life and make it whole and as each bit is healed the whole is healed.

Staying focused on what you can control and actually have the power to control is not easy. The distractions of modern life and cries of pain and suffering coming from the rest of the world and even from the planet itself are difficult to resist. We shouldn't ignore them but should put them in their proper place in our worldview. We shouldn't, however, allow them to pull us away from our focus on getting our own bit of the universe sorted. If we, by effort or chance, happen to get ourselves and our loved ones properly balanced and have energy to spare we can widen our boundaries and share our successes with the rest of the universe.

It is not selfish to center yourself on what you can control and make right and hope that the balance and correctness spread from your center.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Friends are Where You Find Them

A nice story and pics my daughter sent but I don't know who was the original author.

The Jesusita Fire in Santa Barbara, CA (or Santa BBQ as Cookie Jill would say)last week caused these two to take shelter together. The fawn is 3 days old and the bobcat about 3 weeks. The fawn came from somewhere in the fire and the bobcat from Carpentaria. They immediately bonded and snuggled together under a desk in the Santa Barbara County Dispatch Office for several hours.

Reportedly the bobcat kitten was rescued near Arnold Schwarzenegger's ranch, where it was dehydrated and near death.

They rescued the fawn during last week's wildfire.

Although wild animals, especially of separate species, are never placed together due to regulations, in this emergency situation, they had no choice.

During the mayhem of the fire, they were forced to put animals anywhere they could, since they had run out of crates large enough for the fawn. The kitten ran to the fawn, and it was instant bonding.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Why We are Losing Our Edge

Here's the bottom line:

The United States today devotes 16 percent of its gross domestic product to medical care, more per capita than any other nation in the world. Yet numerous measures indicate the country lags in overall health: It ranks 29th in infant mortality, 48th in life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths.

You can paint it blue with pink polka dots and you can call it socialism or even communism but the reality is that we are being screwed by our lack of a progressive health care system. Our current system costs more and treats less than comparable systems worldwide, and as a result America is less competitive and much less healthy.

"Our health-care system is fraught with waste," says Gary Kaplan, chairman of Seattle's cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As much as half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health, he says.

Not only is American health care inefficient and wasteful, says Kaiser Permanente chief executive George Halvorson, much of it is dangerous.

Those harsh assessments illustrate the enormousness of the challenge that awaits President-elect Barack Obama, who campaigned on the promise to trim the average American family's health-care bill by $2,500 a year. Delivering on that pledge will not be easy, particularly at a time when the economic picture continues to worsen.

Read that last sentence one more time and then ask yourself why, if over half our costs are wasted wouldn't delivering on the pledge to reduce our costs merely be as simple as removing the waste in the system? It is not like we are blazing a path in the wilderness with the idea. You can see working models in every other industrialized nation in the world. They have a working system, why can't we? Here's an example of why we are only getting 50 cents on the dollar when it comes to health care in America, it shows you where that huge amount of money goes that doesn't improve our health care - into drug and insurance company pockets:

The study cost $130,000,000 and included 42,000 patients. It compared the effectiveness of four types of blood pressure drugs: a calcium channel blocker, an alpha blocker, an ACE inhibitor, and a simple diuretic. The diuretic performed best. It was the sort of finding worthy of celebration. Health costs are too high, and rising too quick. Our flabby society gets bad readings when it straps on the blood pressure cuff, and soon enough we'll all be on these drugs. And here were study results saying that the diuretic, a generic drug which sells for pennies, outperformed its pricey, patented competitors. So what happened? Not a whole lot [...]

Diuretics sales jumped, but only by a few percentage points. "[They] should have more than doubled," says Curt Furberg, who chaired the study. And in a world where doctors prescribe medications based on a simple reading of the latest evidence, maybe they would have doubled. But we don't live in that world. We live in a world where pharmaceutical companies have big budgets and sophisticated public relations teams. Pfizer, for instance, put up $40 million to ensure that their Cardura, their alpha blocker, was included in the study. That proved a mistake. Patients on Cardura were more than twice as likely to require hospitalization for heart failure [...]

The basic reality was this: The pharmaceutical companies had a skilled team and a lot of money promoting their drugs. No one was promoting the generic diuretics. Folks looking to things like comparative effectiveness review to save the health care system should take the story seriously. Evidence is only effective if physicians use it. And right now, they have no real reason to use it. Even in a system this expensive, there's no internal incentives to aggressively cut costs. Maybe it's time there were. If doctors were paid by capitation -- if they got a fixed amount of money per patient, and they kept whatever they didn't use, as happens in England -- it's hard to imagine they wouldn't have been more interested in these study results.

So, let's say this one more time - the best answer for the American health care system is to remove the profit incentive that drives all this waste. Drug companies and insurers spend less on care and more on administrative and public relations costs because that's where the profit is. The raw reality is that they have absolutely no incentive to deliver better care, and the sad part is that they make less profit when they do. The ugly truth is that until profit can be completely removed from the system, there will not be meaningful progress on health care. We progressive pinko commie socialist hippies are constantly being told that single payer just isn't politically viable, and meaningful discussion is driven into the ditch and everybody then starts talking about removing waste and improving "efficiency" which is just double talk around the real issue which is "fat cats getting fatter making money off of our need for medical care."

The lack of a single payer health system in this country, like that in the rest of the civilized countries in the world, is possibly the biggest issue facing this country. It is part of the problem surrounding the auto industry. It is part of the problem on why we can't compete with other nations industrially. It is a huge part of why a large part of our population is going to bed hungry at night. It is part of the reason 50 million or more American children are not getting a fair chance at growing up healthy and able to compete on a level field with others. It is huge contributor to most of what ails our nation today. We need it fixed and fixed now.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Friendly Reminder

The folks in California got a friendly reminder yesterday that you don't really know when some natural or man made calamity will strike. Fortunately there are few reports of serious damage or injuries from yesterday's shake. So once again your crazy blogger that thinks everybody should be prepared passes along some good information.

Meteor Blades has a post up at the Great Orange Satan that links to some good articles prepared by Kossack AlphaGeek 3 years ago, shortly after Katrina wrecked the Gulf Coast, killed nearly 2000 people and left tens of thousands stranded without power or potable water for days. AlphaGeek, a Silicon Valley technical executive with professional experience in risk assessment and disaster-readiness planning, performed a tremendous service with a five-part series on the subject.

Here are the links from Meteor Blades post:

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 1 of 5 - Assess your risks!

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 2 of 5 - Plan to survive!

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 3 of 5 - Plan to survive!

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 4 of 5 - Gear, supplies and training

Are YOU ready for disaster? Part 5 of 5 - Conclusion