Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in pacotelic's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
4:12 pm	Hachintosk Mini9 Got the Mac Netbook up and running. Protip: don't buy the box set, you can install the whole thing with the $30 upgrade DVD. (Comment on this)
Friday, October 9th, 2009
2:55 pm	Science Friday http://virtual.clemson.edu/groups/birdrad/ (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
10:33 pm	Monkeyshines ( Read more... ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
12:26 am	Campaign Finance Reform Make a condition of licensing for all broadcast stations an channel a block of free advertising to political candidates. Dedicate this advertising to only the time devoted to the news. (free speech) Prorate time for candidates inverse to paid avertisements in other time slots. (Equity) Serve. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
9:32 am	Descartes error So. Was up with the chickens after getting to sleep after a ruinous sugar buzz brought on by damned delicious cupcakes from damned cupcake shop in Georgetown. I'm calling the 2012 trend for the astute urbanite : Artisan Lard Made breakfast/cleared dishwasher/loaded same/got dressed in a multitentacled frenzy. The casualty was too much salt in the scrambled egg whites. Knew I should've omitted NaCl. Dropped Pyari of at all day conferecne as world was wkaing up. Didn;t see anoter car until we got on I-66.Said good morning to the same huge moon we said good night to the previous dusk. Then blinded by the sun heading east. Fun. Starbucks has the before nine set cornered in Georgetown. Banged out a section on cheapness and nails in the one table between 31st and Wisconsin. Lacking wireless, and wanting to check on things, present company included, I cast about for places to get free connections. Unfortunately, the only place in G-town with free whiffy serves cupcakes and coffee. See above. I only need so much coffee and sugar. So here's Descartes error. I go back to the car, freely parked in Georgetown mere steps from the conference, and try to work out the math. Leave the car there for her to use when she's done 8-10 hour later? Will she be too tired to drive? Hang out in G-town for 8-10 hour hemorhagging cash form one dining establishment to another. Subsist on cupcakes for the day? Leave the car there and take metro back home for the day? When at home, sit around there (never as productive as it could be), or get on the bike and drive someplace more conducive? what kind of time would that take? I do need to keep riding though, but if I did that I'd probably just be getting back to Vienna now. Have a lotta writing I want to do today, its true. Don't I have the courage of my convictions? Can't I get work done while waiting for and on the train? Sat there for five minutes gazing blankly at the C&O canal bridge, mulling over a mode split decision. Then I turned the key like an American and exercised my right ankle again. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
1:17 pm	He never writes, he never calls /Andy Rooney: What cheeses me off is that I tend to be in sync with Morning edition in my morning errands. I'll get in the car, with the radio faithfully tuned to 88.5 (90.9 in Philly, 90.1 in Atlanta, and 88.1 in Greenville IIRC). Wanting to write and wake up, I"l head to a coffee shop to get my ticker revved to dangerous levels and, if I'm lucky, enter a fugue state it takes me most of the morning to recover from. Just think, no one's even suggested making coffee illegal, but it can do a number on you, I assure you. The problem is, I usually write/read for an hour and change, which is precisely as long as the NPR news cycle on morning edition. So when I get back in the car to actually go to work, I"m hearing the same stories I did an hour ago. I'm sure in a decade that things will be more a la carte, but right now it's a vexation. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 25th, 2009
7:13 am	Cheap Reading Cheap by R. Shell these days, and somewhat beguiled by her exploration of economic and behavioral mechanisms for demanding the lowest cost at any cost. This was not always the way of things, and there is no reason to think that it will always be. That's heuristic handwaving however, and I'd like to know how to tease apart the ball o' yarn. Anything is better than "this is really bad, so we should stop it". So I propose this as a brick in the "chinese wall": A Pigouvian tax on corporations proportional to the ratio in pay of their higheest paid worker versus their lowest paid worker. While it's a blunt instrument, I can't see another way to correct the urge of management to cut workers to the bone to improve short term profits at the cost of long term survival and public goods. Right now, the conflict is all worker on worker, andthere is little to no feedback loop in place to disincent management beyond the next quarter and protection of the executive pool at the expense of the labor pool. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
6:53 am	Monticello Going to see that original suburbanite and violator of building codes, Thos. Jefferson. Should be interesting. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 11th, 2009
11:56 pm	In which I go off and google some graphs. First off, I'd like to introduce this graph, which doesn't answer the question completely but is a better illustration of fiscal conservatism combined with activist conservatism: Check that abscissa! I know your alibi for this. Now, to the matter at hand. Mind you, the secular leader of a Shi'ite majority sate has no real motivation to ally himself with a Sunni/Wahhabist Jihadist form two state over, but there you go. Sometime I think the right was informed on their axis of evil policy by close study of the "He-Man" series from the 80's. If that were the operative model, why didn't you wait for them to doublecorss each other like they always did? I forgot, you needed an inflexible musclebound homoerotic to ave the day in all cases. Now, adding up the annual budgets doesn't wuit get us to a trillion dollars (Though that would've been a lot of highways, bridges, schools (urp, sorry about that), and dare I say it, transit. Let's assume that we paid for all that "as we go". Alas, just before Bush launched us into a campaign that jacked up the oil price and devalued the dollar, he cut taxes. I know you don't like the term "foregone revenue", but here it is: A pretty gross graph, covering the time from 2001 to 2006. So here's a graph with a time series covering the same period in question. BTW, the Y-axes are labeled poorly, but perhaps this was done to avoid the unreality of huge numbers. The dollar range is from 1.5 to 3.0 trillion dollars. All in all, declining revenues plus rising costs puts us squarely in the red throughout dear leader's first and second terms. While this might not be a trillion dollar war (of our or our grandchildren's money), it sure was at least a 850 billion dollar war. Every chimerical reason given for this war has rung false. I'll pull up the list some time if you'd like. I'm sure you voted libertarian democratic during this period, but many republicans here should be reminded in forceful terms that they've been had. Unless of course they like putting the country into hock for some crusade. The term I use for that is repugnican. Finally, there's these equally irrelevant, but pretty damning to your peer's inherent argument, graphs. In conclusion: fiscal conservatism is a fig leaf so long as it is wielded by the flavor of revanchist conservatives we've been afflicted with for the past few decades. True, a balance of powers between R and D does seem to do better than a one party solution, but there is little to no evidence that R, given total power, will do better with the taxpayer's money than D. Except one thing. D may actually try to pay down debt, while R will put it on the credit card. That's solid fiscal policy! Ah the imperial republican presidency. Do you have any idea what Goldwater, Buckley or Burke actually stood for? (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
9:48 pm	Joe Wilson (R- SC) http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gTWB1M9VPOte4M77spW7Z62NsGyQD9AK4ULO0 (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
7:52 pm	Compare and contrast The Hindu Marriage Ceremony vs. The fight scene from "Beat It" (2 Comments |Comment on this)
9:01 am	How do you spell incentivised? In response to this great post: http://wildcelticrose.livejournal.com/897844.html Powerful. Insurance companies are incentivised to withhold care because it cuts into their profits, doctors are incentivised to order more test and prolong the diagnosis because it protects them from lawsuits, lawyers are incentivised to sue doctors for malpractice because there's no limit on torts and no no way to litmus test cases for frivolity until they've already been tried, insurance companies are incentivised to charge doctors amounts you and I could live on because of the danger of a malpractice suit, doctors are incentivised to seek high paying positions (instead of GP) because med school is so expensive, consumers are incentivised to ask for expensive treatments because insurance shields them from being sensitive to costs, doctors offices and hospitals are incentivised to overcharge because figuring out who to bill and how much is not simple, consumers are incentivised to be unhealthy because the USDA and DOT have been winning the war against healthy food and physical activity for the last 60 years. Break any one of those links, and you'd be on your way. My problem with a 1,000 pages of text is that its bloated and tries to do everything, when a phalanx of smaller bills could tear at the problem and address it more nimbly. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
10:10 pm	Bannination I know why I've been banned from conservatism. I was being a child I know why I've been banned from wock. He was being a big baby But why have I been banned from paste42? Puzzlement. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
8:17 am	Time to make the best of this day. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 28th, 2009
10:54 pm	Well, that was stupid Got a "exclusive" invitation to review a couple of TV pilots a coupe months ago. Threw these away summarily, as we do not won a TV for a reason. This afternoon, pyari, tells me that a friend invited us to a TV pilot review. Seemed vaguely familiar. I was hurtling back from Leesburg, and something about driving and TV just goes together. So I said sure, figuring it would at least be a unique experience. So we get to the Sheraton on Columbia Pike, meetup with the friend, and get ushered into their largets ballroom with 200 other gullible Americans. The shows Stunk on Ice, obviously pulled form the remainder bins of shows that never were. One was a dead-again remake called "Soulmates", and the other was a dumber version of Full House called "Dads" We tittered amongst ourselves. The commercials were excellent, in most cases. See where that's going? So we figured we'd better answer in the most generic way possible to the surveys, lest we get barraged with mail as a likely rube custoemr. Whatever we could do to get our questionaire thrown out, we did. Pyari double answered on some questions. I put my email as haywood@jablome.com, and aother assorted hilarity. We had a good time. Not uplifting, but hilarious. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
7:46 pm	A very instructive 2.5 hours In order to truly bike within a city, you must bike to a place that you thought could only be reached by car. -When I was 10, me and my friend Matt would bike to Emory to play Dig-Dug at Jaggers. We could swear it was 10 miles round trip. -When I was 15, I first biked to Stone Mountain. I got a flat tire while I was there, which taught me the virtues of having a pump and patch kit with me at all times. I had jobs from age 16 to age 23 that were five miles away from my house. This was the apex of my biking, as I was able to repair my bike on a semiregular basis, and riding it was pretty much my nature. Because of this, I did not get a drivers license until I was 22, in Atlanta. Around 21 t 24, I saw it as complete freedom, having the necessary endurance and bike skills to go anywhere anyone else could go in twice the time, but under my own power. I would not be stranded. Between age 25 and 29, I moved to a country town, and my biking fell precipitously with the vision of a can of Miller to the back of the head. After moving back to Atlanta, I managed to get my legs back to some extent. The true fall was the realization that my job would give me a Marta pass, gratis. Most days I would bike there and train it back. After moving to Philly, I had perhaps one of the most beautiful bike commutes available in the US, along the Schuylkill River, but the approach to hone was a quarter mile of solid hill. I got used to the commuter ail, and memorized the timetables. I could be stranded if I stayed out past 12:14. So I even resorted to the Volvo. Of course, finding parking for the blasted thing was a chore. Between age 35 and 37, like most newly married men, my biking fell off and was almost non-existent. Today, I biked from Vienna to Ballston, and back. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
12:24 am	Nitelation Dru k and satiated in Philadelphia 10 hours ago I was quite stressed Tomorrow we weed, write and get parts off bikes. Such is the condition. To sleep! (Comment on this)
Friday, August 14th, 2009
4:17 am	(4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
11:58 pm	Rosa Parks Poster applause exit, stage right (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
12:24 am	Your talking points have arrived! The below is from ladylynx. The horror that she posted in red utterly did not stand up to scrutiny, but I can't confess I"ve read the whole thing. Did download it though. Again, I believe none of this, but you'll be hearing all of this from people you know in the coming weeks... " • Page 16: States that if you have insurance at the time of the bill becoming law and change, you will be required to take a similar plan. If that is not available, you will be required to take the gov option! • Page 22: Mandates audits of all employers that self-insure! • Page 29: Admission: your health care will be rationed! • Page 30: A government committee will decide what treatments and benefits you get (and, unlike an insurer, there will be no appeals process) • Page 42: The "Health Choices Commissioner" will decide health benefits for you. You will have no choice. None. • Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services. • Page 58: Every person will be issued a National ID Healthcard. • Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. • Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (example: SEIU, UAW and ACORN) • Page 72: All private healthcare plans must conform to government rules to participate in a Healthcare Exchange. • Page 84: All private healthcare plans must participate in the Healthcare Exchange (i.e., total government control of private plans) • Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens • Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan. • Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter. • Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. • Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages. • Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives. • Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families. • Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll <>BR • Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays a 2 to 6% tax on payroll • Page 167: Any individual who doesnt' have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income. • Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them). • Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records. • Page 203: "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax." Yes, it really says that. • Page 239: Bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected." • Page 241: Doctors: no matter what speciality you have, you'll all be paid the same (thanks, AMA!) • Page 253: Government sets value of doctors' time, their professional judgment, etc. • Page 265: Government mandates and controls productivity for private healthcare industries. • Page 268: Government regulates rental and purchase of power-driven wheelchairs. • Page 272: Cancer patients: welcome to the wonderful world of rationing! • Page 280: Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions. • Page 298: Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government. • Page 317: Doctors: you are now prohibited for owning and investing in healthcare companies! • Page 318: Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval. • Page 321: Hospital expansion hinges on "community" input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN. • Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing. • Page 341: Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc. • Page 354: Government will restrict enrollment of SPECIAL NEEDS individuals. • Page 379: More bureaucracy: Telehealth Advisory Committee (healthcare by phone). • Page 425: More bureaucracy: Advance Care Planning Consult: Senior Citizens, assisted suicide, euthanasia? • Page 425: Government will instruct and consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc. Mandatory. Appears to lock in estate taxes ahead of time. • Page 425: Goverment provides approved list of end-of-life resources, guiding you in death. • Page 427: Government mandates program that orders end-of-life treatment; government dictates how your life ends. • Page 429: Advance Care Planning Consult will be used to dictate treatment as patient's health deteriorates. This can include an ORDER for end-of-life plans. An ORDER from the GOVERNMENT. • Page 430: Government will decide what level of treatments you may have at end-of-life. • Page 469: Community-based Home Medical Services: more payoffs for ACORN. • Page 472: Payments to Community-based organizations: more payoffs for ACORN. • Page 489: Government will cover marriage and family therapy. Government intervenes in your marriage. • Page 494: Government will cover mental health services: defining, creating and rationing those services. Source: Everywhere, but it seems to have originated at Fark. The page numbers are there, so it's easy to look it up. And...the actual bill: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/hrdraft.pdf " Here is a more recent version that I downloaded for comparison. This is the preferred option in the legislature at this points. http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/AAHCA09001xml.pdf http://pleasecutthecrap.typepad.com/main/deconstructing-rw-lies-hcbill.html (3 Comments |Comment on this)